


Sister Hunt

by Pippa



Series: The Brother Game [2]
Category: The Big Valley
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 23:30:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 33,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21216848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pippa/pseuds/Pippa
Summary: This was previously posted on Fan Fiction





	1. Chapter 1

"Margaret are you all right? You look over wrought?" Edith Stephens put her arm around her older friend and guided her into the front room where tea was already set out in preparation for her visit.

"Oh, Edith, I just had the most awful experience. I don't know what Victoria Barkley can be thinking? And Audra, honestly, the way Victoria is raising that girl. I don't know how she ever expects her to make any sort of a life for herself."

"Oh, no. What's happened now?" AnnMarie Holland asked, rising majestically to her feet but making no move to go toward the other two women.

"I don't know if I did the right thing. It all happened so quickly, and I was upset. I just couldn't think." Margaret Dwyer allowed her friend to guide her to the settee and fuss over her a bit, taking her package, pouring a cup of tea for her while she settled her not insignificant frame on the chair.

"Well, come along Margaret, don't make us beg," AnnMarie said, acerbically.

"I was coming from O'Brien's. I'd picked up the new dress Stella had finished for me. It's in the package. It's quite nice. Just a day dress, but I think it's so nice to have good dresses even for day wear…"

"Margaret, you were coming out of Stella's shop?" AnnMarie cut in knowing that once Margaret Dwyer got distracted she would be all day returning to the main topic. Stockton society was not large and while Margaret Dwyer was not over endowed with wit AnnMarie enjoyed Edith Stephens' company and it was hard to have one without the other.

"Yes, yes. I was coming out of O'Brien's and I tripped just as the door opened in my face. Really the floor by the door there is so worn it’s a wonder no one's been killed." Margaret paused to drink some of her tea. AnnMarie had to admit the other woman truly was upset, her hand was shaking slightly and her face was quite flushed.

"Well, as I was saying I tripped and dropped my package and I might have fallen except Audra Barkley was on the boardwalk and the young man with her caught my arm." At this point Margaret Dwyer blushed. 

AnnMarie didn't think she had ever seen the older woman blush and for a moment she pictured Margaret Dwyer falling into the arms of some beau of Audra Barkley and almost smiled. It must have been quite the sight she decided. She thought the young man must be fairly strong to have caught Margaret and not gone to the ground with her not inconsiderable bulk on top of him. Then she did smile, just a very slight movement of the lips, much too well schooled in the social niceties to actually smile at another's misfortune. But the thought that perhaps Margaret and Audra's beau did both end up on the boardwalk; well, it was enough to make anyone almost smile.

More tea, more fussing from Edith and Margaret was back on course again. "Then Audra introduced us. Oh really, what can Victoria be thinking to let Audra come into town with him and for her to be introducing him."

Suddenly, AnnMarie thought she knew where this was going, and any humor disappeared from the incident. "Was it?"

"Yes, it was. Tom Barkley's woods colt. I couldn't believe it. Right there in front of O'Brien's and Audra Barkley introducing him to me. What was I to do?"

"You didn't?" Edith asked.

"What choice did I have? He'd just saved me from a fall. He was holding my package. What could I do?"

There was a moment of silence while the three considered the situation. 

"It's entirely Victoria's fault. I can't believe she has taken him into her home and now. Well, really to allow him to accompany Audra into town. And then Audra to put me in the position of having to recognize him." 

AnnMarie had to admit it was a very difficult situation and one they were all likely to be facing shortly if Victoria did indeed intend to keep the man in her home and force him upon her friends.

"So you recognized him?" Edith asked again.

"What choice did I have?" Margaret almost wailed this last. "Now I suppose every time I'm out I'll need to be on the look out for him. He'll be forcing himself into my social circle, forcing me to greet him on the street. Oh, I don't know what I'm going to do?" Margaret was almost in tears at this point and began pawing through her reticule looking for a handkerchief.

"You will need to be alert, certainly. But surely if you avoid him he will take the hint?" Edith offered uncertainly. "Did he seem like the sort of man who would presume upon the acquaintance?"

"I don't know. He was a very nice looking young man. Victoria has cleaned him up no doubt, he was quite presentable." Margaret finished wiping at her eyes and drank more tea. AnnMarie could see that the commiseration of her friends and having the worst of her revelation behind her had considerably calmed Margaret's always anxious nerves.

"He had the good manners to hand my packages to Audra and return to their surrey. He didn't attempt to converse with me or presume upon the introduction. He didn't actually say anything now that I think about it. I was so upset at the time I hardly knew what to say. He just touched his hat and gave a little smile and excused himself to Audra." Margaret slowed in her speech, AnnMarie supposed for the first time actually thinking about the incident clearly.

"You know Audra. She was just so gay and bright gushing on about introducing me to her brother, Heath. I swear Victoria knows better. What can she be thinking?"

"Yes, I was amazed when Helen Merar told us that Howard said that Victoria had Tom's…. well that she had the boy in the house and had acknowledged him. Victoria of all people." Edith said with a slight sniff. "She should be setting the tone for polite society in Stockton. Not going out of her way to embarrass us all."

AnnMarie listened to Edith and Margaret catalog Victoria Barkley's shortcomings. They were very good at this as it was a popular pastime at many of their informal little teas. AnnMarie liked Victoria Barkley but had no illusions that the woman was going to set some high tone for Stockton society. The woman was far to free in her thinking on many topics to be trusted with setting the tone for any society, let alone the upper crust of Stockton. Still this, this went beyond anything she would have thought even Victoria capable of. To not only have the young man living with her family but to then force him upon her friends.

"Perhaps Victoria didn't know Audra was bringing him to Stockton?" she suggested. "It would be perfectly within Audra's standards of behavior to sneak him into town without Victoria being aware?" 

This brought the conversation to a halt for a few moments while all three considered this possibility. "No, I think Victoria is planning to force him upon us." Edith said slowly, AnnMarie thought almost reluctantly. 

AnnMarie knew that much as Edith might snipe at Victoria's failings the two had been friends since they had both come to Stockton over thirty years ago. This would be very difficult for Edith she thought and gave her friend a sympathetic smile. Yes this was going to really set the cat among the pigeons of Stockton society, Victoria Barkley parading Tom Barkley's bastard around polite society.

"You don't suppose they'll bring him to Susan Preston's party on Saturday?" AnnMarie asked wondering if that sinking feeling in her stomach was the beginning of a faint.

"Oh, surely not. Bea would never have invited him." Edith said with more confidence than AnnMarie thought Beatrice Preston's good judgment could ever warrant.

"Audra is here to spend the night with Cecilia isn't she?" Edith asked AnnMarie.

"Yes, I'm driving the two of them out tomorrow morning to help Susan decorate for the party." AnnMarie had a terrible feeling that she should immediately go home and make sure her daughter wasn't hosting her own tea for Audra Barkley and her….

"I think perhaps I should be going and make sure Cecilia has packed everything she will need for her stay with the Prestons." AnnMarie said a bit weakly. She wasn't going to make Edith and Margaret a gift of her concerns about Cecilia and the Barkley bastard. She had valued Cecilia's friendship with Audra. There was no question the Barkleys moved in much more rarified society than the rest of Stockton. Or they had she thought grimly as she gathered her reticule and rose to her feet avoiding the sympathetic looks of her friends.


	2. Chapter 2

"Oh, Audra, it's so exciting and romantic," Cecilia Holland said smiling at her friend. "He's very handsome."

Audra looked at Cecilia for a moment and then at the back of the departing surrey with her brother, Heath, driving. Yes, she guessed he was handsome. She realized how fully she had accepted him as her brother, she'd stop thinking about how he looked. Like Nick and Jarrod he just looked like himself.

"I don't think Margaret Dwyer thought he was at all that romantic," Audra said.

"Oh, did she say something?" Cecilia asked ready for a good gossip about one of her least favorite people. "Yesterday, I met her in the mercantile and she told me she thought that I was very fast to be wearing a red dress in the morning. Really, it was that old cotton dress. I wouldn't have worn it there at all, but mother needed sugar and sent me out." 

Cecilia pouted and looked up at Audra through her eyelashes. It was a look the two girls had practiced with some determination the previous month, thinking it was very fetching and showed great sensitivity; so much more elegant than actually saying something wasn't nice. Just a small pout and a quick look through the eyelashes to indicate unhappiness.

"That's very good," Audra told her and returned the look with her own pout. Both girls laughed and putting their arms around each other's waists, began walking around to the back of the house.

"Mother said we could make our own tea and have it in the front room," Cecilia said proudly. "I made a pound cake yesterday for tea. It came out a little lopsided but it looks ever so nice and brown on the top."

"Are you making a cake for the party?" Audra asked.

"I was going to make the pound cake. I've made it four times in the last two weeks and I'm getting dreadfully tired of it. The stupid thing never seems to rise evenly." Cecilia forgot to pout prettily and just looked disgusted.

"I made cookies. Mother said a cake would be stale by Saturday. But I can help you with the pound cake," Audra offered, although she wasn't sure how much help she could actually be, as her last pound cake hadn't risen at all.

The two girls chattered away happily about what dresses they were wearing the next morning on the drive out to Susan Preston's farm and what dresses they would change into for the afternoon's actual party.

"Is your brother, Heath, coming to the party?" Cecilia asked returning to her earlier interest in Audra's new brother.

"No. The invitations went out before he came to the ranch. Also he's still not feeling too well. He's been sick. This is the first time Mother's actually allowed him to leave the ranch. But he's coming tomorrow to pick me up at Susan's and take me home after the party."

"Perhaps the Preston's will invite him in to have a piece of cake when he comes with the surrey," Cecilia smiled, Audra thought, a bit starry-eyed.

The two girls had no more then begun their tea when Cecilia's mother came bustling into the house. Audra didn't even have an opportunity to say hello before Mrs. Holland was inquiring after Heath. 

Audra was surprised, but very pleased with this interest in her brother. Heath had been very concerned that the people in Stockton wouldn't approve of his living at the Barkleys, that they would hold his birth against him. Audra had assured him that there was no need to be concerned. He had just smiled when she told him this and she'd recognized that sort of know-it-all smile Nick got every time he thought he was so much older and wiser than she. So Audra was very pleased to be proven correct in Mrs. Holland. She was a real stickler for the "right thing" and if she was asking after Heath then he had nothing to worry about.

"Is your new brother here, Audra?"

"No, ma'am. He dropped me at the house and had to return home."

"I see." Mrs. Holland removed her gloves and her hat before saying anything else. "Did you have an opportunity to meet him Cecilia?"

"Yes, mother. He's really quite nice looking," Cecilia said smiling broadly at her mother.

"Did Audra introduce you?" Mrs. Holland asked, Audra thought rather sharply, giving her a very cold look

"No. That is, she would have, but he dropped her at the gate and left before I could get there," Cecilia said, her disappointment obvious.

"Quite right," Mrs. Holland nodded to Audra. "That showed very good sense on your part, Audra. Now, enough nonsense out of you Cecilia, have you girls finished your tea?"

When both girls quite properly said they were finished. Mrs. Holland instructed them to clear the table and bring out their sewing.

"We were going to go for a ride," Audra suggested, a tad tentatively. Mrs. Holland had always frightened her a little bit and she was still working her way around what good sense she had shown. She couldn't recall doing anything that would earn Mrs. Holland's approbation.

"I don't believe that would be at all suitable. It's very warm out. You may walk into town, however, if you would like. No further then the mercantile and back in an hour."

Neither girl felt terribly excited about this prospect but both recognized it was much more desirable than an afternoon of stitching under Mrs. Holland's exacting eye. 

*******

Heath backed the little surrey under the carriage shed and climbed out carefully. He would never admit it to anyone but he felt exhausted. The short ride into Stockton had left him shaky and out of breath. He leaned against the little mare for a moment while he got his breathing under control. Then shaking his head in wonder at his own weakness, he quickly unhooked the shafts of the surrey and led the mare into the big barn used for the horses the family kept at the ranch house. 

Working slowly and carefully he removed her harness and hung it up and then began grooming the mare, stopping every few minutes to straighten and catch his breath. Once he finished, he gave her a fork full of hay and left her standing in the cool of the barn, munching happily. She was a sweet, if unambitious little thing, and he had very much enjoyed his drive with her. He just wished he didn't feel like he had taken a six-horse hitch through Carter Pass.

He walked out into the bright glare of the afternoon sun and over to the back of the house where Mrs. Barkley kept her garden. He found the little bench that had become his habitual seat for the past five days, sat down gratefully and leaned his head back against the live oak tree that provided shade, and closed his eyes.

"So, was it too much or are you alright?"

He started awake and then tried to get to his feet only to be stopped by her hand on his shoulder. Knowing he was blushing at having been caught napping yet again by this woman, he looked down at his hands nervously. He couldn't get accustomed to the way she treated him.

He had met some grand ladies in his time. Oh, no one as grand as Mrs. Barkley, but ladies who thought they were grand and not a one of them had ever even spoken to him beyond a "get boy," sort of warning. He couldn't seem to find what to say to this lady when she spoke to him. He knew he sounded awkward and clumsy when he was in her presence, so he tried to avoid her if he could, and when he couldn't, kept his remarks as short as he was able. Still he felt every time he opened his mouth it was to sound the idiot or to wound her.

"It was no trouble, ma'am," he said, trying to keep his answer short without being rude. Nick was on to him all the time to talk more. But he never seemed to have much to say. Not that having nothing to say ever stopped his two brothers and sister from talking, but he couldn't seem to get the trick of talking about nothing. But he did try to always answer them with words.

"And you got Audra to the Holland's with no difficulty?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Did you pick up her new dress at Mrs. O'Brien's shop?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Something seemed to strike Mrs. Barkley funny in this exchange and she smiled at him and came around to sit down beside him on the bench. He hastily moved as far to his end as he could to make sure she didn't get any of his trail dust on her pretty dress. Then he was afraid he would look like he didn't want to sit next to her. He knew he was blushing again. What would she think now?

"You look tired."

"No, ma'am. I'm fine."

She did that thing where she stared at him and cocked one eyebrow and waited for him to talk. She had begun doing that to him the second day he was in that upstairs bedroom not dying, and he'd yet to understand how she knew when he wasn't telling her the whole truth. But whenever she asked a question and he gave a half answer, up would come the eyebrow and she would just sit and wait until he gave more words to her question. He'd gotten to the point now that when he saw that look, he just gave her more right off. Didn't bother trying to out wait her, wasn't any point. 

He wondered that none of her children seemed to have inherited that patience. They didn't get an answer, they mostly just answered their own questions and kept on talking. Not Mrs. Barkley though. She kept coming at him until he gave what she wanted.

"Got a little winded. But I'm fine now."

She reached over and took his hand in hers and sat holding it for a moment in silence, the two of them looking off over the ranch toward the distant mountains. "Did you meet anyone?"

"Yes, ma'am. Audra introduced me to Mrs. Dwyer." He hadn't wanted to tell her this but he knew she would keep on until he did. He figured, get it out in front and not make a big deal of it.

Mrs. Barkley just nodded her head and made no comment. They sat in silence watching the day pass. Something he seemed to be spending an awful lot of time doing lately. Letting time pass while he waited on his body to get healed.

"I'm sorry, Heath. This is going to take a little time."

"Yes, ma'am. I don't think Audra noticed," he offered.

Mrs. Barkley laughed, "No I don't suppose she did. You tell me if it gets very bad, please."

He looked over at her sitting there, so straight and sure, then he looked away at the mountains again. He couldn't think of anything that would cause him to trouble this lady with his problems could he help it, and gave her a small smile of thanks for asking.


	3. Chapter 3

Heath took care in grooming the little mare wanting her to shine and do Audra proud when he picked her up at the party. He'd washed the surrey and spent an hour doing the bright work so it shone as well. He figured it would mostly be all dusty by the time he drove the fifteen miles to the Preston's ranch, but he thought he could stop and run a rag over the surrey and the mare just before he got to the ranch. Would only take a minute, didn't want Audra feeling ashamed of the rig when he picked her up.

Once he'd finished he went up to his room and changed into the new shirt Mrs. Barkley had bought him. He'd been saving it for best, wearing his old best shirt around the ranch. The old shirt didn't look very good being all stained with the blood from his gunshot wound. But Silas had mended the hole so you couldn't even see it. Had taken fabric from the bottom of the back and sewed it right over the hole with tiny little stitches finer than his mama could have done. But he'd wanted to wear a shirt with no stains or mended holes and look neat when he picked up his sister. He'd never been to a party but he thought, probably any party Audra went to would be very fancy, so he was glad he had the new shirt to wear, picking her up.

"You still here? Thought you would have gone an hour ago to get Audra?" Nick asked coming up to him in the barn where he was putting the harness on the mare. Nick walked to the off side of the horse and dropped the belly band down for him and did up the breeching while he talked. He admired that about Nick, man saw some place he could help out he put his hand right to it.

"She said to come at five, she was helping take down the decorations."

"More like she wants to go for a stroll with the Walker boy. You get over there Heath and pick her up and get her home," Nick was scowling now.

"Is he a bad sort?"

"Not a bad boy, exactly. Just not good enough for Audra, is all," Nick said after reflecting for a moment.

"So I shouldn't shoot him when I get there, if he's strolling with Audra?"

Nick looked startled. "NO…." then he laughed at Heath. "Come on I'll help you hitch up."

"I got it, Nick. Ain't an invalid."

"Didn't say you were." 

Honor satisfied Heath let Nick lead the mare over to the surrey and back her between the shafts. Nick always willing to put his hand to any work needed doing, but if Nick was going to help out, he'd be in charge. Heath didn't mind and followed along behind happy to watch his brother take over his job. 

His brother. He smiled. He was still getting used to the brother thing. It kept sneaking up on him at odd moments like this and every time, the feeling of lightness surprised him, made him want to smile.

"You just going to stand there, grinning like a fool, or you going to go get Audra?" Nick demanded.

"I'm going."

The drive to Preston's wasn't complicated, out to the main Stockton road and then west for ten miles to their ranch road, then three miles on the ranch road. He passed a couple of wagons going toward Stockton and exchanged waves with the drivers. He noticed they both seemed to have girls in pretty dresses in them, figured the party must be over a while ago. 

He stopped just as he saw the top of the barn and climbed out to dust off the mare and the surrey. He took a minute to knock the dust off his shirt and hat, although his hat was in pretty sorry shape, was going to take more then knocking a little dust off make it good enough for an Audra Barkley party. He thought, once he got back on his feet and could work again he needed to buy a new hat so he'd look like a real Barkley. Still though he thought the surrey and mare looked pretty sharp. He walked the last mile, give the mare a chance to cool down so if she had to stand and wait for Audra wouldn't do her any harm and he could water her before leaving to go home.

When he came up to the house, he saw a wagon waiting out front of the porch, shafts on the ground, no horse. No other horses anywhere else either, so he thought everyone had gone, still no horses anywhere? Strange. 

Guessed he was maybe later than Nick would have liked. He stopped the mare and got out of the surrey and led her over to the water and let her have a short drink, then tied her to a corral fence looking about as he stood by the mare. No horses in the corrals, no one coming out on the front porch to see who'd driven in, no horse between the shafts of that wagon in front of the ranch house. Seemed funny, a party and all, and no one about the house.

No one answered his tapping at the door and he wondered, maybe they were in the back, it being such a nice day, maybe it was an outside party. He walked around to the back of the house and that was when he heard the yelling, all muffled and distant. Took him a minute to realize the house had a storm cellar, noise was coming from under the house.

He opened the backdoor to the house and stuck just his head inside and gave a hello. When no one answered he went on in and in a moment found the storm cellar door in the kitchen floor with the cook stove pulled over on top of it. He felt a fool standing there but he didn't reckon he could move the old stove as weak as he'd gotten being sick. 

He went out to the barn looking for a lever or something help him with that stove. When he saw the dead cowboy in the middle of the isle he figured he'd not get any help from around the ranch. Man being shot, anyone near enough to hear him yell would have heard the shooting. Figured he needed to move that stove alone and quick. 

He walked back to the house as fast as his bad lungs and weak legs would allow carrying a singletree to use as a lever and managed to slide the wood stove off the hatch way a few inches at a time, wheezing like a wind broke mule the whole while. Folks in the cellar had heard him working on the stove and had the hatch up as soon as the stove cleared. The first one up he figured for Mr. Preston, an older man looking grimy and frightened.

"Who are you?" the old man demanded, looking about a bit wild-eyed.

"Where's Audra Barkley?" he answered him, "she down there?"

"No they took her. Who are you?"

"Who took her? Where?"

"I don't know, nine or ten riders, I never saw them all. They took all the girls." By this time two older women, one his wife he figured and two young men in fancy clothes had come up the stairs and the noise was getting a bit much, everyone talking at him, wanting to know where they'd gone and who he was.

He put his hand on the man's shoulder and tried to pull him away from the other folks all talking at him. "Who took Audra? Where?"

"I don't know. A bunch of riders came up. They said not to follow and the girls would be all right, they would leave them in Tracy. They took all the horses, made me give them a bill of sale. They said not to follow or they would kill the girls. Said they'd leave their horses north of here five miles. Said they'd leave the girls in Tracy. If we don't follow them they'd be safe and they'd leave them in Tracy." The old man was beginning to babble. 

Heath looked around the room, now seeming to be full of people all talking at each other.

"How long?" he asked the old man who now had his arms around one of the two older women who was crying on his shoulder. 

"I don't know a while ago…it was dark in the cellar…I'm not sure," he said.

"Hour, perhaps a little longer," came from the old woman who was standing alone her eyes moist with unshed tears and her obviously expensive black dress disheveled, but her gaze steady and firm. "Who are you?"

"I came for Audra," he said not wanting to go into the complications of his birth and status in the Barkley family at this moment. "Do you have more saddle horses here?"

He directed his question at the old man but his answer came from the woman in Mr. Preston's arms. "You can't follow them. They said they would leave the girls in Tracy but they would kill them if we followed them."

"Where is your remuda?" he asked again.

"You can't follow them," the woman insisted. "Who are you?"

"I'm Audra's brother," he named himself by his relationship so they would understand he had the same stake in this they had. So they would understand he was going for his sister.

"You're Tom's boy, the new brother?" the black dressed woman asked, the one who'd told him how long the men had been gone.

"Yes, ma'am. Where's the remuda and I need a rifle." 

"You may not care about those girls but we do. You can't follow them. They'll kill the girls if you follow them," this again from the woman he assumed was Mrs. Preston.

"Ma'am, why would nine or ten men take those girls to Tracy and turn them loose there?"

"They said they would," came from the other lady.

"Yes, ma'am. I'm sure they did. I'm not going to follow them to Tracy so you got no fear on that count. I'm following them east to the mountains and then south to Mexico. Now I need a saddle horse and a rifle, some grub if you can put some in a bag for me."

He thought he would give the old man one more minute to make up his mind was he going to help or not, and then he would need to just go. He stood and waited on the old man's thinking. When after a minute the room remained a chaos of indecision, he nodded his head to himself and started toward the front of the house. He hadn't gone far when the old man grabbed his arm. "North of the barn half a mile there's a fence, horses are in there. There's a big bay, four-year-old stud colt. He'll take you to Mexico if you need to go that far. Come back here I'll have grub and a rifle for you. Saddle's in the barn." 

Heath nodded his understanding and continued through the house and out the front door to where his mare still stood tied. He unhitched the surrey and threw her harness on the ground before crawling up on her bareback and riding her over to the barn. Inside he found two ropes and a bridle and saddle all in good condition, well cared for. He tacked her up quickly and was out the back of the barn in a few minutes, his rope in his hand.

The remuda was easily found, about fifteen horses standing under the shade of a clump of willows near a muddy water hole. The four-year-old stud colt stood out from the group half a hand taller than the rest, well muscled and nice headed. He rode into the group slowly and dropped a rope on the bay's head with no trouble. He looked the rest of the horses over for a minute and then dropped his second rope around the neck of a mule headed grulla.

He brushed the grulla's back off and dropped the saddle on him, five minutes later he was most of the ways back to the ranch. Riding the grulla leading his mare and the big bay stud colt. The grulla had a nasty jog and a good big canter with some buck to it. He kept him cantering the other two horses keeping up, no trouble on the lead lines.

He tied the three horses to the hitching post in front of the ranch house and went into the barn for a peck of oats and a set of hobbles. By the time he'd found the feed and a bag and gotten back out to the horses, the old man was there tying saddle bags and a bedroll to the saddle, sliding a rifle into the scabbard, two canteens already over the horn. Not Mr. Preston's first time on a long trail, he thought, and looked at the old man more closely.

"Grulla's got a nasty temper in the morning but he's got bottom," the old man said, "not the horse the bay is though." Heath nodded his understanding, about what he expected looking at that ugly headed horse, didn't think he'd ever met a grulla wasn't nasty tempered in the morning.

"They got my girl and Mrs. Holland's Cecilia too." 

Heath glanced up at the straight lady in the fancy black dress and nodded his head to her. She didn't look away but gave no acknowledgment of his nod.

Heath pulled the rifle from the scabbard; it was a Winchester yellow boy. He checked that the magazine was full and saw the rifle looked clean. He walked over to the wagon and pulled out the rag he'd used to dust the horse and surrey and folded it and put it under his shirt, over the healing wound in his shoulder. 

He rested the rifle on the rag and sighted at one of the fence posts on the far side of the barn corral two hundred yards away and fired three shots. The rifle shot true, and like the horses, appeared well cared for and very useful. He sighted a cottonwood tree a bit over three hundred yards away and fired at the center of the trunk. He hit it twice where he aimed, third time shot was a good foot high. He didn't love the yellow boy but it could have been worlds worse, could have been a Springfield. His shoulder felt like he'd been kicked by a horse, but he figured the rag would keep the wound closed and allow him to do what he needed doing.

"There's two boxes of shells in the right saddle bag," Mr. Preston said.

The other people from the cellar had come out on to the porch by this time and stood as a group looking at him. The two young men stood uncertainly to one side. Heath looked at the older of the two boys, a dark haired young man about his own age. "You take my mare, ride out to the remuda and get yourself a horse the ride to the Barkley's. Tell them what happened. Tell my brother I'm going to try and hit their trail. If I lose it, I'm headed toward Mariposa," as he spoke he reloaded the rifle and returned it to the scabbard.

"I'll come with you," the young man said stepping forward with late found resolve.

"You should take Dan Walker with you," Mrs. Holland said stepping forward now, suddenly very sure of herself.

"Tell my brother I'll push them, keep them riding so they don't have time to stop."

"You need to take someone with you," Mrs. Holland said again. "It wouldn't be fitting you and those girls alone."

Heath looked at her in some surprise. What did she think those nine or ten men, riding hard, had in mind for those girls? What did she think he was going to do when he caught up to them? He gave his head a slight shake to get her stupid words out of his brain and mounted the grulla, picking up the bay’s lead rope with his off hand.

Ignoring the other suggestions and pleas from the people Heath turned the horses and headed southwest away from the trampled ranch yard. A mile from the ranch he turned southeast and started scouting for a trail. Took him half an hour and he was about three miles southeast of the ranch when he hit a wide trail of over twenty horses moving fast, headed southeast. Three miles later he knew he was on the correct trail when he came to the first cut fence and saw a dozen horses scattered about grazing. He took a moment and rode around the loose horses slowly. They were thin and worn looking. Been ridden hard and for a while. He didn't recognize most of the brands; the two he knew were from east of San Diego. 

He figured from the tracks the men were mostly cantering at a good clip, the trail was wide and easy to follow, that many horses in a group made a pretty good path. He looked up at the sky and figured he had another three hours of good tracking light. If he hadn't seen their dust by then he'd need to take his best guess -- or let those nine or ten men have a night alone with those three girls. 

He guessed he'd need to push pretty hard, find out how much bottom the horses had real early on. He gave the grulla a gently stroke down his shoulder and leaned forward as far as his sore chest would allow and spoke to the horse. Told him they needed to go find his beautiful blond haired sister and her friends. That they needed to rescue her and he was sorry but whatever pain it caused a nasty tempered, mule-eared horse didn't matter, didn't matter what pain it caused a twenty-one-year old brother either. They needed to ride, needed to go get his sister and bring her home. He pushed the grulla into a gallop and sat down to ride, the bay stud colt keeping pace easily beside them. He kept his right hand stuck inside his shirt, holding his ribs together and saving his now aching shoulder. Was going to be a long ride and he would need that right arm at the end of it. 

*************

"My brothers will come and you'll be so sorry," Audra shouted with satisfaction to the cowboy leading her horse. "When they catch up to you they're going to kill you for taking us."

About the only satisfaction she had gotten thus far had been thinking of her brothers killing these men. They had ruined the party, ruined her dress and ruined her walk with Danny Walker and made Cecilia and Susan both cry. She was so angry she might have cried herself but wouldn't give them the satisfaction, not when she could think on what her brothers were going to do when they caught these… these… outlaws.

"Girlie, if you don't shut up I'm going to shoot you," the dirty, blond haired man who was leading her horse said, not even bothering to look at her when he spoke. "We got three girls here, we don't need to listen to you. We can just leave you on the side of the trail."

Audra wasn't sure if they would do that or not. She'd never been kidnapped by outlaws before and wasn't sure just what they would do. In her books when girls were kidnapped the hero always rescued them very quickly. They were never kidnapped by nine dirty men and dragged across the Central Valley on horseback. She shut up while she thought this through. 

She thought about the fifteen miles from the Preston Ranch to their ranch and how long it would take Nick to get the hands gathered and come after her. She knew he would catch up to them and kill these miscreants, she just thought it might take him longer than was really desirable. She wondered would Heath come straight from Preston's or go back to the ranch for Nick. She remembered the night in Stockton when the three men had attacked her in the road. Heath would come straight after her; he wouldn't go back for help. She smiled to herself. These men were going to be so sorry they messed Audra Barkley.

She looked down at her new blue dress bunched up around her knees, the fabric torn already from rubbing against the saddle, completely ruined. Cecilia and Susan were being led by other riders and were nearly invisible in the dust kicked up by the horses in front of her. May and it was hot and dry in the valley, the dust laying loose on the surface of the ground easily stirred by anything passing. She thought it would be visible for miles. As they rode she began working at the side seam of her skirt where it bunched at the saddle horn, worrying at the stitching until the seam opened, then a little at a time she began tearing a big strip of that pretty blue-stripped fabric loose. They were going to be so sorry the day they met with the Barkleys.


	4. Chapter 4

Heath rode the grulla harder than he like to push any horse. He rode him at a gallop until the horse was blowing very hard, then he slowed him to a jog for a mile and then pushed him into a gallop again. He rode him hard for an hour, and then he stopped and threw his saddle up on the big bay, gave both horses a small swallow of water in his hat and started riding again.

The bay was everything Preston had said. His gate was smooth and big. He asked him to gallop and never had to ask again. The horse gave what he had willingly. The rancher was right, this was a horse to ride a man needed to get to hell in a hurry and find his sister. Where he'd had to push the grulla to keep the pace this horse needed holding so he didn't out run himself. 

He thought he saw their dust just around the time the light began to wane and he stopped and traded horses again wanting to save the bay if he could. The grulla was tired now and very unhappy. He had to spur him hard to get the gallop and he did it, hating the way the world could make a man abuse a horse. He figured the grulla had another twenty miles he could get out of him at this pace, after that maybe another twenty but the horse would never recover from the second twenty. He sure hoped he wouldn't need to do that second twenty.

An hour more riding and it was getting dark and he could smell their dust. He stopped and put the saddle on the bay and let the grulla loose to find his way home he had a mind to. He rode the bay at a steady jog now not wanting to gallop up on his quarry before he saw them. Ten minutes riding and he saw their dust settling ahead of him. He pushed the colt into a lope riding to the side of the torn up trail the men had left so he'd make less dust. He kept the colt at a canter until their dust darkened and he could make out the dark shapes of horses under the dust riding into the increasing darkness.

They'd worn their horses out early on and were traveling at a jog. He slowed the colt to match stride, happy to follow them as long as they were moving. Half an hour following and they began to take form on his horizon and he knew they'd slowed to a walk. He pulled the colt to a stop and got out of the saddle, biting his lip at the pain in his ribs. He loosened the girth and walked the colt slowly toward the riders taking his time making no dust. When he could see the outlines of the horses ahead he led the colt off to the east into the early evening darkness putting the setting sun behind his quarry. They had stopped and he needed to hurry now.

After five minutes of walking, he turned west again began moving toward the camp. He found a good strong piece of sagebrush and using his rope tied the horse and tightened the cinch again. Told the colt he was 'sorry', but they'd maybe need to ride pretty fast when he came back. 

He took his rifle and shoulder rag and moved toward the riders, folding the cloth in his shirt as he walked. He didn't want to trust the rifle any further than two hundred yards. At two hundred yards he knew he could hit what he aimed at, any further and he didn't trust the Winchester.

He had just enough light to see the men when he reached his first firing position. He thought he saw Audra, that blue dress she'd showed him in Stockton that blond hair. The men were off their horses watering at a stock pond. He shot the man was standing near Audra and then shot another man at the other end of the group. Body shots on both of them, probably death shots, sorry he had to do it but figured he had no choice, those men having taken his sister and him alone with an unfamiliar rifle. 

Then staying low, rifle in his left hand, his right arm around his ribs he headed south a hundred yards and then fired the rest of the magazine over their heads wanting to scare them into moving again. Not let them stop. Not let them do what they would do if they had a chance to stop with those three girls. Reloading as he walked bent over back to his horse, gunfire going off in all directions from the camp. Looking back toward the riders he saw dust rising up in a cloud around turning horses, shouts of anger in the night.

By the time he reached the bay the men had mounted and were riding again, now headed due east into the hills. Just about what he'd expected. They would want to get to high ground and get a look at their back trail see how many were following them. He knew now they would be dropping someone behind them soon, wanting to ambush him when he followed. Now it was time for the bay to show what he was made of.

He let them ride as fast as their tired horses could gallop while he rode a parallel course on a better horse at a faster speed. They were still coming at him, his having moved so far east before he opened fire, so he just rode ahead of them. He dropped off his horse after a mile and waited. There wasn't enough light to see well enough to pick his targets. He didn't want to shoot one of the girls. But he figured no matter where they were in that party, they weren't at the front of that mob. 

He could just make out the first man passing him, not a hundred yards away. He shot at him three times, the man moving and the light very bad. He thought he saw the man come out of the saddle but didn't stay to find out. He threw himself back onto the bay, crying out as the rifle banged against his leg, jarring his now furious shoulder, and heeled the horse hard trying to get ahead of the bunch before some unlucky shot hit him. They had enough bullets in the air for a massacre, shooting in all directions. 

He rode hard for two miles keeping the last of the light at his back trying to head due east into the mountains, then he stopped the bay and dismounted again. He lay down on the ground with his chest against the earth feeling for the horses galloping behind him, listening hard. He could feel the slight vibration in the earth of a dozen horses coming fast. He waited feeling them in the earth, feeling them getting closer until he could finally hear them, leather creaking, horses breathing hard and of a wonder above it all Audra Barkley yelling, "I told you you'd be sorry when my brothers got here."

Breathing hard he climbed back up on the bay and keeping low in the saddle spurred him into a canter and let him find the other horses for him, relying on his good nature to look for his own kind. Ten minutes of riding and he could smell the other horses' dust. Another five minutes and he was in amongst them lost in their dust and the darkness. He looked for Audra's blond hair and listened for her voice. He heard her before he saw her, berating some hapless fool, thought he could kidnap Audra Barkley and not hear about his mistake.

"YOU'D BEST JUST LET ME GO! MY BROTHER'S GOING TO KILL YOU DEAD," she had a good head of steam going now.

"LET US GO. THEY'LL LET YOU GO IF YOU LET US GO."

"TREY LET HER GO, SHE'S RIGHT. WHOEVER IT IS WILL NEED TO STOP AND GET HER. KNOCK HER OUT OF THE SADDLE, THEY'LL NEED TO STOP FOR HER."

"I'M NOT LETTING HER GO, I'M KILLING HER."

*************

He figured he knew about how that man felt, his sister tearing a stripe off him that way, but he couldn't let him kill Audra. Knotting his reins he dropped them on his horse's neck then he used his knees to move the bay up beside the man, getting close. When the other rider turned to see who was pushing up against him in the dark he reached across and hit him hard in the head with the stock of the rifle. Hit him as hard as he could, not wanting that man to get up and drag some other girl's horse through the night. Hit him as hard as broken ribs and aching shoulder would let him hit a man had kidnapped his sister. 

As the man fell Heath grabbed the loose reins of Audra’s horse and slowed his bay, letting them fall behind as the others galloped on, no one knowing in the dust and darkness. As they moved away he kept hold of the horse's reins and pulled him off to the side and finally brought him to a stop. He figured wouldn't be too long before those men missed his sister's talking, but doubted they'd want to come looking for her in the dark.

"Get on his horse, Audra."

"Heath?"

"Get on his horse now. We got to keep up."

"Heath? Where's everyone else?"

"Just me. Get on his horse."

He didn't need to be able to see her to know she wanted to argue some more, at least to talk some more, to worry around the edges of why he was alone and who was doing the shooting. But she got down off her horse and climbed up on the horse of the man he'd probably killed with his rifle butt. Course, being a Barkley, she didn't stop talking all the time she was moving.

"You're alone? I heard the shooting I thought there were more. What are you doing?"

"Getting your friends. When I get the next girl you catch her horse. Two of you get off the trail to the south. If I'm not back in an hour you hunker down until morning then follow these tracks back to Preston's."

"Where are you going?"

He kneed the bay into a fast jog while Audra got herself sorted out on the new horse. He figured must be pretty hard riding in that outfit she was wearing, big skirt and no breeches. Thought it must be pretty hard being a girl.

"You keep back of me but keep up enough you can catch your friend's horse, she's got no reins. You understand?"

"Heath, what are you doing?"

He ignored her, and she shut up and rode when he kneed his horse into a gallop. He had no trouble out distancing her. Like the men ahead of him her horse was tired and a canter was as much as he was willing to do for her. He figured as much noise, as he'd be making shortly she shouldn't have any trouble finding him in the bright moonlight. 

He pushed the horse harder and in a few minutes had lost sight of Audra and caught the dust of the riders in front. He could see the light colored skirt of one of the girls and headed toward that brightness, quickly making out the girl's horse and the horse of the man leading her. He rode up hard on the man pushing the bay to move into a hard gallop nearly moaning aloud as his ribs protested the movement. 

As the man turned to see who was coming, he slammed his rifle stock into the man's face and watched him fall. He couldn't leave that man laying on the side of the trail a danger to his sister when she caught up to get her friend. He had to hit him hard enough he wasn't a threat to the girls. Had to ride up behind him, letting the man think was his friend catching up after getting rid of Audra. Had to let him think was a friend riding up behind him and then club him probably to death. 

He slowed his horse and cut in front of the girl afraid the man falling and the swerving of his now rider less horse might cause the girl's tired horse to trip. But her horse turned his head to avoid the trailing lead line and stopped readily his head hanging, lathered and heaving hard.

He left her there crying on the heaving horse and pushed his bay back into a canter, the other riders still in sight. They'd be looking back now, wondering where everyone had gone. Wondering who was riding behind them. He could see the five horses, four abreast and the one with the last girl trailing behind on the lead rope.

The bay was fifty feet behind them in a few moments and he checked him a bit there, wanting enough distance from the girl behind him no stray shot would hit her or Audra. He could see them turning in their saddles trying to make out his face. 

"Where's your girl, Joe?" one of them hollered back at him. He figured he was running out of time to make his play. Wouldn't be much longer they would know he wasn't Joe and would begin shooting. He couldn't let them shoot him and go back for Audra. He needed to end this now.

"Let the girl go. I won't shoot you," he yelled that as loud as he could but five hours chasing them across the hills and he was about done in. His yelling wasn't much. Still he figured they must be listening pretty good by this time. Wanting to know who was coming up behind them and all. 

"Let the girl go or I shoot." He was closer now and he knew they heard that. He knew because the man on the far left drew his pistol and spurred his tired horse. He figured shooting off a moving horse, facing backwards in the moonlight only be luck the man hit him. But he couldn't risk the girl's life on his luck. He shot the man leading the girl's horse and then pulled the bay up hard and off to the left side away from the girl's stopping horse. 

The other men let fly with a couple of rounds didn't hit anything and didn't stop riding. He let them go, shooting off three rounds over their heads. He'd already killed all the men he could stand that night, probably more than he could stand. He sat the heaving bay and watched them spur away into the darkness, listening hard, making sure he didn't hear any slacking in the sound of the hoof beats. After a few minutes he moved the bay on down the trail past the girl sitting on her tired horse. He followed the smell of that dust for a mile and it kept moving east toward the mountains. 

He stopped the horse and dismounted, leaning against the saddle for a second to catch his breath from the pain, before dropping the reins and walking away from the hard breathing animal to where he could hear. He stood in the silent night listening. He tried to slow his own breathing so he could hear better, holding his breath for a moment straining to listen. 

Hearing nothing, he returned to the horse and unable to face the effort of climbing in the saddle started walking back down the trail, leading the bay, feeling the horse's warm breath blowing hard against his back. The colt was tired, lathered and breathing hard, but he was walking with his head up, the horse had heart.

After a few minutes of walking he tiredly pulled his aching body back into the saddle and allowed himself the luxury of riding folded over the saddle horn for the rest of the trip back to the girl. He left the reins tied loose around the bay's neck and rode bent almost double his arms around his ribs his chin on his chest so sore, so tired. His horse plodded along equally tired for a quarter of a mile, then he sat up and pushed the bay back into his ground covering jog. That little girl would be sitting on the trail all alone and scared. He needed to get back to her.

The girl's white dress was visible in the bright moonlight before he could see the horses. It sort of glowed with the silver of the moon like a beacon in the darkness. He headed the bay toward her and pulled up to where she still sat on her horse, crying softly.

"It's okay, Miss. I'm Audra's brother and I'm going to take you home now."

"Nick?"  
*********

"No, Miss. You just sit here another minute, then we'll go home." He couldn't face trying to explain to her who he was. He'd thought telling her he was Audra's brother would make her feel safer than telling her he was some back shooting rescuer. Now he wasn't sure.

He rode over to the last man he'd shot, the man who wouldn't let go of the lead rope on that girl's horse, and stepped back down to the ground. He thought if maybe he could either stay on the horse or on the ground he could maybe live long enough to make it back to the Barkley's. The stepping in and out of the saddle was killing him though. He smiled to himself at that last thought. No, it wasn't killing him. Killing was him shooting men who couldn't see him to shoot back and then leaving them dead along the trail. That was killing. The way he felt was just sore and tired. He'd live.

He took his canteen and walked over to the man on the trail. He opened the man's shirt and looked at the hole in his chest and then drew the shirt back closed. Nothing he or any man could do. He could hear the air moving from the dying man's lungs out that hole. 

He knelt down beside him and gently lifted the man's head up until it rested against his leg. Not really much of a man, more of a boy, about his own age, smooth skinned and young looking lying in the moonlight with his bullet in him and blood on his lips. He uncorked the canteen and lifted it, carefully wetting the boy's lips with the water allowing him to swallow some if he wanted but careful to allow only a trickle so as not to drown him if he wasn't able to drink.

"Thanks." The man's eyes opened and stared up at his face.

"Reckon I'm bad hit?" he asked, anxiously, already knowing the answer by the blood in his mouth Heath expected.

"Reckon so." 

"You shoot me?"

"You took my sister."

"My brothers they'll be back for you." 

He made no reply, thinking were his brothers coming back they should have done it while they could save this youngster, not some later time for revenge. He thought brothers who rode away in the dark weren't much in the way of brothers. But he figured this dying man must know that too, dying here in the arms of the man who'd shot him while his brothers were gone who-knew-where. So he said nothing and let the man die thinking his brothers were maybe some part good, and not girl stealing, brother deserters.

"My name's Adam Staller."

"I'll remember that," he promised, knowing he would. 

He held him half propped up against his leg for another five minutes while the breathing got harder and finally, holding hard to Heath's hand he failed to catch his breath and Adam Staller died in the dark and the dust.

He took the dead boy's neckerchief off and wet it and wiped at the blood on boy's face trying to clean him a bit and then stopped himself angrily. Wasn't going to matter now. He said a soft prayer for all this night's dead begging the Lord's forgiveness for them and himself. Thinking that because of him this boy would never get to ride out into another beautiful day, never get to meet a girl, marry and have children, never get to make up for the wrongs he'd done.

Pushing off the ground with one hand he slowly rose to his feet again and looked about for the boy's horse, spotting it easily, standing splay-legged, head down not twenty feet away. He spoke softly to him and walked up and caught the loose reins. Then he led him back to the body and pulled the saddle off and laid the horse blanket over the body weighing it down with the saddle near the boy's head. He pulled the bedroll off the saddle and leading the horse and carrying the bedroll walked back to the girl.

"We need to go back now, Miss," he told her as he removed the halter from her horse and replaced it with the headstall off the dead rider's horse. Then he put the halter on the unsaddled horse and handed the reins of her horse to the girl.

"My name's Heath." 

"I'm Cecilia, Cecilia Holland." She wiped at her face with both hands and he thought she tried to smile at him. He smiled at her, trying to give her some courage.

"Can you manage?" he asked as she took the reins.

"Audra and Susan? They took Audra and Susan too." She was looking about frantically, now that some of her fear at her own condition had lessened, fear for her friends coming on strong. He liked that about her. That she thought of her friends.

"We're going to meet them back down the trail."

He picked up the reins of the bay and turned him so the horse was between him and the girl, not wanting her to see how much struggle he had getting into the saddle. Even so he had to stop, slouched over after he mounted, and wait a bit for his vision to clear before he turned and started back down the trial, leading the spare horse. He figured Mr. Preston would be glad for any of the horses he could bring back. He wished he could have put that dead cowboy on the horse but knew he just couldn't manage the weight and had to leave him there, dead waiting for any scavenger that came on him in the night.

He rode back down the trail watching for the body of the man he thought he'd killed to free the other girl. Thinking that man's body would tell him when he needed to head south to find Audra. He needn't have worried. His clever sister had made a pile of stones in the middle of the wide path created by the passage of the horses, a bright piece of her dress tied to one of the stones visible in the moonlight a clear beacon to him. 

He shook his head at her foolishness. It would have been just as clear a beacon had he been killed and had her kidnappers come looking for her. But he knew, being Audra, such an eventuality would not have occurred to her. She would have decided that she was rescued and not given any other outcome a thought. It was that wonderful Barkley trait of assuming the world was on your side and all would come right that he so admired in all his new family. He always figured the worse in any situation they always figured the best. He smiled to himself as he turned off the trail and headed south riding slow, letting his horse pick the trail, too little light for him to track the girls.

The girls were easily found only a mile south of the trail, sitting on the ground talking softly, holding the reins of their horses and an extra one. He saw Audra stand and look his way as they rode up, no concern at all about who was coming. He surely did love that girl; he smiled at her as he turned his horse away so he could dismount on the side away from her. He doubted she could see his smile in the moonlight, but he had a hard time seeing her without wanting to smile. She was a joy to him.

He half fell the last bit out of the saddle and stood leaning against the bay, the reins loose in his hand. After the hard riding and the fear he was all used up, nothing left for unsaddling horses and building fires, for taking care of three girls and all those tired horses. He closed his eyes and listened to the girls' voices on the other side of the horse, the high-pitched sound of their fear and relief.

He straightened up and lifted the stirrup and rested it on his right shoulder while he loosened the bay's girth. The weight of the stirrup leather on his shoulder nearly dropped him to the ground. If he hadn't been so awful tired he would have laughed right there, him not able to support a stirrup leather. 

He smiled a little at his own stupid weakness as he stripped the saddle off the colt and let it fall to the ground too weak and tired to take the weight. Took the bridle off the horse and hooked his rope in the halter he'd left on the colt all those hours ago when he'd changed horses. He grabbed one of the canteens and poured his hat full of water and held the poor miserable thing while the horse drank. Then he led him over into a clear spot and waited while the horse went down and rolled the sweat and itch off his back, a lazy man's grooming. 

He poured a couple of handfuls of oats on the ground and while the horse ate he knelt down and fastened the hobbles to his front legs talking to him softly as he worked. Telling that big, bay colt what a clever, brave horse he was. Telling him how he'd saved his sister and those other two girls. Telling him all the things that a tired cowboy told a horse who'd maybe saved three lives that night and had been willing to run his own life out had he been asked to.

He removed the lead line and gave the bay a last pull on the ears and left him to wander off looking for grazing while he tended to the other horses. He stripped saddles and bridles and dropped handfuls of oats as he worked his way through the horses. Too tired to give them the attention their efforts that night should have earned them. They deserved a good brushing off and a deep drink of cold water. Instead they got a roll in the dust and a dirty hat full of warm wet but being horses they couldn't complain and he left them to the rich spring grass.

Once he was finished he gathered up the available bedrolls and walked them over to where the three girls sat, arms around each other talking quietly. He made three trips with bedrolls and saddlebags his right arm too sore to carry much, his whole body bent forward over hurting ribs as he walked.

He handed the saddlebags to Audra thinking she could find the food had Mr. Preston packed any. He untied the bedrolls and passed the dead men's blankets to the girls in their party dresses. He could hear Audra talking to the girls and he thought talking at him but he couldn't seem to understand what she was saying and just kept his mind to what he was doing, moving around grazing horses and dropped saddles in the semi-darkness of the bright moonlight.

"Heath? Heath, what's the matter? Look at me."


	5. Chapter 5

He stopped and looked at Audra after trying to step past her twice and having her move to be in front of him, her hands on his arms. He stood droop headed looking at her trying to think what was wrong. Why was she standing there holding him like that? What had he done?

"Heath, I've been talking to you for five minutes and you haven't heard a word I've said. Are you all right?" She put her hand on the side of his face, stooping a bit to look up into his eyes, downcast and focused as they were on the ground.

"I'm fine," he mumbled, unsure what she wanted from him.

"We're fine too, Heath. You saved us," she smiled at him and he smiled back. He thought like Mrs. Barkley she must have something magic in her smile. She smiled and he couldn’t help himself no matter how tired and sore and heartbroken he was, he just had to smile back. He stood like that her hand on his face while he tried to think of something to say, some words he could give her in exchange for that touch.

"There's maybe food in the saddlebag," didn't seem very adequate but was the best he had if he didn't want to start talking about those six dead men lying behind him down that trail.

"Where's the rest of the posse?"

He looked at her trying to understand the question, working his way back through his day looking for a posse.

"I came alone," he finally offered.

This seemed to satisfy her because she nodded to him and stood on her toes for a second to kiss him on the cheek.

"I wasn't scared, Heath. I knew you would come."

There was nothing anyone could have said to that and he gave her a small smile and kissed her on the forehead.

"You all sleep. I'll keep watch."

"Susan and Cecilia have already fallen asleep. I don't think we want any food," she gave a small shiver.

"You cold?"

"No. I knew you would come but I lied before. I was afraid. I can't imagine how frightened Susan and Cecilia must have been. They didn't even know you were coming."

He stroked her beautiful blond hair, all wind blown and dusty. She smiled at him again and for a moment rested her head against his chest. Speaking into his dirty shirt she said, "It's so good to feel safe again."

It only took Audra a few minutes to spread a blanket on the ground and lie down with her two friends. He stood there looking at the three girls and thought that maybe if he never did anything else as long as he lived that saving these three girls would be enough to save his soul. Then he remembered the six men he'd killed that night. How many girls did he need to save, make up for all that killing?

He walked back over to his saddle and pulled the rifle from the scabbard groaning softly as the movement seemed to push his ribs together in a bad way. Carrying the rifle in his left hand he walked slowly around the perimeter of the sleeping girls and discarded saddles. He knew if he sat down he'd fall asleep, but he doubted he could keep walking until daylight, feeling dizzy and having a hard time walking a straight line.

He slowly walked over to where the bay stood, head down eating, and leaned against his side resting his head on his dusty back. It was a warm night, but even so the warmth of the horse against his chest and face felt good. He reached into his shirt and tried to pull out the rag he'd stuck in there to protect his shoulder from the recoil of the rifle. The rag was stuck to his shoulder and he cried out softly as he pulled it loose. Wound must have opened up some, stuck the rag with dried blood. He felt his shoulder inside the shirt, could feel the warm blood on his fingers. Didn't seem to be coming too fast, couldn't feel some big hole to go with the pain, decided he could let it be. Shouldn't have to shoot anyone else tonight, those other men riding away, never looking back.

He remembered his mama hugging him when he woke in the night after the cave in that killed Davy Barstow. Him so afraid to go back into that mine again, come to that almost afraid to go into the house for a while there. His mama telling him nothing mattered except she loved him and that made all the hurt and fear less. He felt tears pricking at his eyes. No one would ever hug him like that again, tell him he was loved and that it didn't matter what he did they would always love him. Mama was dead, and he guessed leaning against a dusty horse just wasn't much of a substitute for his mother's love.

Still, he was so tired that he remained there letting the horse hold him up while he thought about his mother, so he couldn't think about all the dead men who would be alive had he never been born, never learned to shoot. When the sound of his rifle falling woke him he knew he'd fallen asleep standing there against the horse. He could see the rifle lying on the ground in the moonlight, a dark shadow on the dark grass. He stood there looking at it lying there, wondering, did he have the strength to bend down and pick it up. 

He wiped the tears off his face and calling himself a fool bent for the rifle. He might need to kill some more men tonight and he'd need a rifle was he going to do that. He wouldn't want to see some man in the dark and not be able to kill him, did he decide he needed to. He stood holding the rifle, fighting the urge to throw it as far away into the darkness as he could. 

But the fault didn't lie with the rifle. This rifle had probably never killed a person until he'd got his hands on it. Probably could have been a rifle for a hundred years and never killed a man without Heath came riding up saying he needed a rifle to go kill some men. Nope, no fault with the rifle. Did something need to get thrown away in the darkness it wasn't the rifle should go.

He staggered away from the horse and walked over to where the girls lay asleep. He knew he couldn't stay awake any longer, couldn't keep the watch he'd assigned himself. He lowered himself to his knees next to Audra and gave her shoulder a squeeze and waited while she woke and sat up blinking at him in the dull light.

"Heath?"

"I can't keep the watch." He kept his head bowed as he spoke too ashamed to look at her. "If you could stay awake for a couple of hours?"

She smiled her radiant Audra smile at him in the darkness.

"I think I've waited my whole life for one of my brothers to ask me to share a watch."

He looked up at her and found he had tears in his eyes again, glad of the darkness that hid his weakness in the face of her generosity. Taking his shame from him and making it something with her pride.

"Don't shoot anything. You hear something wake me. You get sleepy wake me."

"Go to sleep, Heath."

He struggled to his feet and turned away only to be stopped by her hand on his arm. 

"Use my blankets, here." 

He almost laughed at that suggestion, remembering Mrs. Holland standing on the ranch porch looking at him. He could see her right there in the shadows telling him to get away from her girl, to not think about laying down in those blankets and passing out with exhaustion next to her girl. 

"I'll be over there nearer the horses." He stroked her hair and then straightened and tried to walk away without looking like he was falling with every step until he was over where he'd dropped the bay's saddle. He pulled the saddle blanket off the top of the saddle and spread it on the ground and lay down on his back with his pistol tight to his stomach in his left hand. He could see Venus already over the distant mountains and guessed they had another two, three hours of darkness. 

***********

Adam Staller woke him pulling him into a morass of mud and dead bodies. He didn't think he'd made too much noise in the waking because when he opened his eyes no girl was standing over him asking what he was about. The sun was clearing the mountains and already delivering on its promise of another hot dry day. 

He started to roll over and get up and found he couldn't move. The pain in his ribs robbed him of breath and he just lay there panting for a moment. He should have known his unused muscles would punish him for yesterday's ride but he'd never expected this. He pulled his knees up slowly and managed to roll to his side, wincing at the pain in his shoulder as he forced himself to stand. Just needed to move around, loosen up the sore. He looked at the saddle next to his blanket and wondered how he was going to saddle four horses.

"Hey, sleepyhead," Audra called from where she was sitting with her two friends all of them in the pretty frocks now torn and dirty. He stood looking about for a moment getting his bearings in the light. He could see the bay grazing a hundred yards off to the east the other five horses further away, leaving the hobbled bay, as they found better grazing. 

He reached around awkwardly and dropped his side arm in his holster, hissing through his teeth as he twisted. He tried to tuck his right arm in the front of his shirt again to spare the pain of it hanging from his sore shoulder but couldn't even move it. He had to take hold of it with his other hand and tuck his fingers in his belt. Walking like an old man he hobbled across the grass toward the girls.

Audra stood up as he approached and gave another of her bright smiles. "We gathered some wood for a fire but couldn't find any matches in the saddlebags."

She gestured at the limbs and twigs piled haphazardly in the middle of where the girls sat as if it was already a fire and they were sitting around it. He closed his eyes as a spell of dizziness swept over him. Please God, he thought, don't let me fall down on these ribs.

"Heath, are you alright? You don't look very good." Audra had hold of his good arm and was helping him the last steps to their cold fire.

He smiled at her and fished his oilskin of matches out of his back pocket. Sitting carefully on the ground he messed about with their kindling and branches until he had something that would burn and then lit it. That seemed to be the magic action the girls had been waiting for and they went to work with frying pan and bacon and coffee pot, talking to each other and shooting shy glances in his direction.

"We found all this stuff in the saddlebags. We thought we should eat before we headed back." Audra smiled brightly at her friends as if they were all on a picnic. Her two friends didn't look quite so certain. The one named Cecilia had a tentative smile on her face. The other girl was not so pretty as Cecilia and Audra and younger he guessed. She didn't bother trying to smile. She just sat there, feeding small pieces of wood into the fire between shooting him nervous looks.

"That would be good." He'd never seen any situation wasn't made better by coffee. He sat watching the fire and the young girl feeding the little twigs into it, while Cecilia and Audra messed about with bacon and coffee, talking of parties and ruined dresses, none of them speaking of cowboys and kidnapped girls.

Cecilia pulled the pan off the fire and dropped a couple of pieces of bacon on a cold biscuit and shyly handed it to him, smiling at him for a second before she dropped her eyes. The other girl, Susan, just continued staring into the fire feeding it little twigs. He smiled at her and gently put his cup in one of her hands. "Can you pour me some coffee?"

She looked up at him uncertainly and then down at the cup in her hand as if unsure what it was. Audra picked up the pot off the fire and gestured toward the cup. The girl held it out while Audra filled it and then, smiling with downcast eyes, handed it back to Heath. He returned her smile and gave her a brief nod. She'd be all right he thought. He didn't really know about girls but he'd seen boys worse scared then she was and they'd come all right in the end. She'd just need a little time to forget and put some good memories over the top of the fear.

He drank the coffee and ate the biscuit listening to the two girls talk about the ride in the dark and how long it would take them to get home. Audra drawing Susan into the conversation, asking her questions, holding her hand. Audra would see her right.

"Heath." He realized he'd fallen asleep sitting there when Audra's hold on his arm woke him. "Are you alright?"

"Just tired." He'd dropped his empty coffee cup when he fell asleep. She handed it back to him full of coffee. He took the cup and tried to smile for her but found he couldn't meet her eyes, couldn't sit with these three girls as if they were all at a tea party. He struggled to his feet and walked away with his coffee. He thought Mrs. Holland had had the right of it. No way he should be with these girls. He didn't drink coffee with girls at make-believe picnics. He murdered men who couldn't see him coming in the dark.

He felt the tears in his eyes again and took a swallow of the coffee, weak and hot so it burned his mouth. He took another swallow, enjoying the pain of the hot, bitter coffee that made him think of coffee and not dead men.

He dropped the empty cup beside his saddle and walked out after the bay. Time would take care of this awful feeling, would make it so he could bear it. He lived long enough he could put these memories with the others. Put them in that place he kept the things he couldn't look at in the daylight. They would still be there waiting for him in the dark of course, but if he put them away he could get through the day. He thought he was an expert at putting away things too awful to think on. He'd practiced that for years now and he'd gotten so good at it he could live right along side of normal folks and they never knew. He thought Nick maybe suspected but put that thought aside as well. He just had to think about the right in front of him stuff. Not let his mind get to wandering around on the things best forgotten.

The poor bay was actually pleased to see him, gave a little knicker when he came up to him and put his head up to be scratched. He offered him the oats he'd brought, stood holding his poor beaten up hat while the horse ate out of it. Then he poured a little water from the canteen he'd carried out and let the horse drink. He didn't have much water but he figured the bay would be working a lot harder than he would be this day and gave him his share and the horse's both.

He led the colt back over to the saddle. He rummaged around in a set of saddlebags until he found a dead man's shirt and used that to roughly wipe the horse's back. He picked the saddle up in his left hand, his right arm still almost frozen in place from the damage done the old wound by the rifle recoil the previous day, and stood holding the saddle waist high looking at the horse's back. The bay was a good big horse. He let the saddle fall to the ground and leaned his head against the horse's side again.

"Heath, let me help." Audra put her hand on his arm again. When he turned to look at her she wrapped both arms around his waist and hugged him. 

"I don't know what's wrong, but please let me help."

"Can't seem to get the saddle up." He offered the easy answer for why he was standing there leaning against the horse, the answer that didn't include a trail of dead bodies stretching behind him all the way to Tennessee.

She stepped back from him and wiped under his eyes with her finger making no comment about the tears he hadn't known were there. "I don't know what's wrong, but I can help with the saddle."

He nodded his head not wanting her to let go of him; afraid he would just blow away in the morning breeze if someone didn't hold him there. The tired and the pain and sorrow left him feeling hollow and light as if he wasn't really there. He remembered his sorry from the night before, his missing of his mama's hugs and tried to smile for Audra's kindness.

"Thanks, Sis."

"I don't know what's wrong, Heath. Can you tell me?"

He shook his head and gave her a small smile. He thought her kindness might completely undo him, might unravel the few seams he had left holding him together. He didn't know why he was having so much trouble putting the night's dead in their place. Maybe that place was finally full? Maybe he'd just killed so many men now there wasn't any more room in the part of his mind where he put things he couldn't stand to think about.

The two of them managed to push the saddle up on the big bay's back without knocking the blanket off on the far side. He pulled the blanket straight under the saddle and tightened up the girth. The mounting hurt but was over quickly and he rode out to fetch in the other horses giving Audra a nod of thanks.

They were over an hour getting the horses saddled and bedrolls shook out and tied up. Audra acted the drill sergeant ordering the other girls about, assigning horses hugging the sad younger girl and telling her she'd be home soon. Once they were all on a horse she looked at him and nodded.

"We're ready, Heath."

He tied the bay's reins together and let them drop on the horse's neck. He could steer him easily with his legs and use his good arm to lead the two spare horses. He kept his right hand tucked in his belt and led his little cavalcade out of their camp and toward home.

The horses were all tired, maybe as tired as he was and not anxious to move. He kept them at a walk and headed west back toward the Preston's ranch, the nearest place he could think to go. He figured Nick would be on his way. He thought back to his ride the previous night, fifty miles easy. He looked at the horses walking with their heads down their flanks drawn from too much running and not enough water. These horses wouldn't go fifty miles today, be lucky they did twenty and they needed water.

Nick would have gotten to Preston's last night but he suspected, no further. Would have waited at the ranch for light so the men could track them. They would push hard but not fifty miles hard. That posse wouldn't want to kill their horses on the first day of a maybe long chase. He thought the posse would make thirty miles, but Nick, he would ride hard. Nick would be up to them by early afternoon.


	6. Chapter 6

Twenty minutes into the ride he heard the buzzards already at work on one of his dead bodies. He drew rein on the colt and sat for a moment perhaps a hundred yards from where the birds flapped and fought. No shovel and he didn't want those girls riding home with a load of dead outlaws. He needed to go look though. Needed to make sure that man was dead and those birds weren't waiting on his dying, maybe going to speed it along.

Audra drew up beside him. "Heath?"

"Stay here. I'll be right back."

The man was dead. He'd hit him as hard as he could with the stock of the rifle, been as sure as he could be the man was dead. If he hadn't been when he fell, he sure was now. He climbed down off his horse and went through the man's pockets; see if he could find a name for the man. He found four bits and a plug of chewing tobacco. He pulled the bedroll off his saddle and threw the blanket over the body keeping the ground cloth. Wouldn't fool the buzzards long but he didn't think he could just leave him there uncovered like that. He bowed his head for a moment, said a prayer for a man he'd killed, and didn't know his name even.

Audra hadn't waited, of course. And her riding up had brought the other two girls. He left the body hurriedly when he saw them riding up and met them thirty feet away. He stopped his horse across their path and stood between the three girls who were looking past him and the blanket covered body. They'd surely known in the night what he was but he thought the knowing and the seeing weren't the same thing. He couldn't look at them and didn't say anything, just struggled up into the saddle and turned his horse away.

"Is that one of the men from last night?" the Cecilia girl asked, speaking loud enough he thought she was talking to him. He looked at Audra, see if she would answer for him, but she just looked straight at him waiting. Waiting with that look her mother got when she was waiting on him to finish answering a question.

"Yes, Miss." He kept his face turned away from the girl. He couldn't stand to see the look was in her eyes. That morning for a few minutes they'd been four friends on a picnic. Not now though. Now he was a killer with three girls. 

Hour later they came up to the body of the man who'd led Audra's horse. This time when he left them and told them not to follow they stayed put. He left Audra holding the lead lines of his two rider-less horses and rode up to the body slowly and sat in the saddle, looking down at dead man's ruined head.

He rode the bay around the body in a slow circle until he hit the trail of the man's horse. Horse was a quarter of a mile to the north and easily caught. Horse had stepped on his reins and broken them both off, but he had no trouble putting the bay colt in front of the horse and catching the headstall. He led the horse back to the body and pulled the saddle off, dropped the saddle blanket over the body and the saddle on top of it. Would keep the buzzards away a while longer.

The girls had ridden a few hundred yards and stopped to wait for him. He rode up to Audra and reached for the lead lines from her two horses to add to the one he already had. He didn't look at any of the girls, kept his head down and his hat low. He couldn't bear to look at those pretty young girls and didn't want them to see his face.

"I can lead a horse." Audra hung on to one of the lead lines stubbornly. "Give one to Susan, she's the best rider of the three of us. She can lead one too."

He looked up surprised at her words not expecting anything from them but silence. The younger girl, Susan, held out her hand for a lead line, a smile on her face, he guessed for Audra's praise.

"My Pa will be glad for his horses back."

An hour later and another dead body and then the place they'd almost stopped in the night and two more bodies and three more horses. He dropped saddles on bodies and led the horses back to the girls.

"There were nine of them." Audra rode up beside him around the three horses he was leading.

"I stopped killing them after a while." He kept his eyes down the trail and didn't look at her, just kicked the poor bay hard and dragged the three slow horses after him, the pain in his ribs feeling like a penance.

He spotted a stand of cottonwoods about noon and they rode over there and found a small spring fed pond. It was already shrinking with the coming of the long dry season but there was enough so they could fill the canteens and then water the horses. The horses were worn out, a night of galloping as hard as they could had nearly destroyed two of them and only the bay looked good for much. He left the saddles on the horses, just removing their headstalls and loosening girths. He thought Mr. Preston would have a right to think he'd abused his horses but hoped the man would forgive him with the return of his daughter. He just couldn't hoist all those saddles back up on those horses again.

He left the girls at the pond and put the bay on a long rope walked to the edge of the trees and lay down in the grass on the place between the sun and shade. He tied the lead line loosely to his wrist so the colt could graze all around him. He closed his eyes against the sun and let the warmth lull him to sleep.

He knew he'd cried out this time because Audra was kneeling beside him out of breath her hands on his shoulders.

"Heath? Heath, wake up?"

He'd known if he stayed with this new family sooner or later this would happen. As many demons as he carried with him eventually one would escape where Audra or Mrs. Barkley would see it. He'd shared them with Nick. He hadn't meant to, but he had. Now Audra. He didn't know if he could bear this sharing of demons with Audra. She was for light and beauty and joy not for the dark things that haunted and killed and pained. He shook his head at her and rolled away from her, desperate to escape her questing after his darkness.

"Heath?"

He lurched to his feet and followed the rope over to the bay colt and began to tighten his girth.

"Heath, what's wrong?"

He couldn't look at her. He shook his head and took the bridle off the saddle horn and pulled the colt's head up and waited while he took the bit, never looking at Audra. She put her hand on his back and he stepped toward the colt, moving him over to escape her touch.

"Nothing. Leave it be."

"It's not nothing. You were yelling."

He looked up at the sun and thought they'd been there two, maybe three hours and him asleep for most of it. He mounted the colt and rode out to catch the other horses. They hadn't wandered far and had he been less worn out would not have bothered the colt for the short ride. He left Audra standing legs akimbo, hands on her hips, a pout on her face, wanting what he couldn't give.

The water and rest did the girls and the horses a world of good. The horses, heading toward their home range, began to step out a bit less reluctantly. The girls being clean and headed home on a bright spring day were chattering like magpies. He let the bay step out and easily kept ahead of them, leading three of the spare horses, looking for Nick now.

He saw the dust an hour later and stopped the colt to study the coming rider. He thought it was too much dust for one horse but didn't think it could be the outlaws swung around and coming from the west. Still he dropped the lead lines and turned to pull the rifle from its scabbard. He couldn't turn enough to reach the stock of the rifle and was preparing to dismount when Audra rode up and pulled the rifle out and handed it to him.

"I wish you would tell me what's wrong. Did you get hit last night?"

"Just sore. Stay here. All of you."

He left the girls and spare horses and kneed the colt forward into a slow lope the rifle across his thighs putting some distance between what was coming and the girls. Two hundred yards and he stopped and sat in the saddle, waiting. When he recognized Nick's chocolate gelding he turned and rode back to the girls. 

A minute later Nick and Mr. Preston came up on tired horses, big smiles on their faces. He dismounted and gathered up the lead lines he'd dropped and walked away from the crying and hugging and talking. He stood with the horses stroking the face of the colt, letting Mr. Preston and Nick pick up the weight of his fear for those three girls, keeping himself separate from the happiness of the reunion.

Nick wasn't long coming to him, his arm around Audra, big smile on his face. Nick didn't say anything. Just walked up to him and put his hands on his shoulders and studied him. He couldn't meet Nick's eyes and looked away toward Mr. Preston, where he was holding Susan, the girl talking away now, the man and girl bright with pleasure. Then Nick pulled him into a bear hug, the pain of his shoulder easily offset by the warmth of the embrace. 

He stood for a moment his forehead on Nick's shoulder almost surprised-to-tears again by another Barkley. He allowed himself to be folded into Nick's body, feeling the strength of the other man and for a moment he let himself relax and let his brother take his weight. Then he gave Nick a quick hug with his good arm and backed away from him. He doubted Nick would hold those six dead men of any account; he would not be less in Nick's eyes because he'd killed six men yesterday. But it also wasn't Nick's load to carry and he couldn't put it on him now.

"You all right? Audra said she thought maybe you were hurt?"

"I'm good, Nick. Just tired." He looked up at Nick now and smiled, and just for a moment put his hand on his brother's shoulder, touching him again, so glad to feel the strength of him, the sureness of everything that was Nick.

Nick clapped him on the shoulder, taking care that his hand landed on the good shoulder and gave him a big Nick smile. "You done so good, kid."

He smiled at Nick. Nick who could never understand the price that he'd paid for this praise or for those three girls. Then he looked at the girl with her father and knew the price had been cheap. He could carry six more dead men for those three girls. He wasn't sure how but he knew he must and as his mama would say 'needs must when the devil drives'. He guessed he'd made his pact with the devil on this deed, paying six dead men for those three girls, and couldn't begrudge the cost.

They decided to head the three miles back to their lunching place at the spring for the night. Nick's horse and Mr. Preston's were about done in with the long ride they'd made that day and the nearest water going west was ten miles away. They rode slowly back toward the small pond, Nick's voice raised loud as he told of the day's ride and who was behind in the posse and who'd come to the Preston's to wait and what had been said and who'd said it. He could hear Audra's quieter voice but not make out her words from his place at the back of the group leading the spare horses, watching the others and feeling their joy in each other.

He listened as Nick told of the band of men who'd robbed the bank in Fairfield, stolen horses from a ranch south of Rio Vista. He told of nine men led by Eli Staller and Tracy Woesner riding south stealing horses as they needed fresh mounts until they'd come to Steven Preston's ranch and stole the horses and the girls, until they'd gotten Heath on their trail in the darkness. After a time he stopped listening and just rode the colt, enjoying the feeling of Nick being there, of Nick knowing what to do. Then he just rode and tried not to think at all.

They built a new fire in the burned spot left from their lunch. Preston and Nick helped him with the horses while the girls followed them from task to task, talking steadily, making more work and making all of it easier with their talking. Audra and Cecilia gathered up bedrolls and saddlebags and set up a camp, while Nick carried saddles and blankets to the fire. 

Heath mostly stood with the bay, too weak with tired to be much help, too lost in his head to join the talking. After a while Nick came over and handed him a brush and stood talking while Heath brushed the horse, concentrating on the brushing, half listening to Nick talking at him about the ranch. 

"I need to go back down the trail in the morning, Nick."

"You need to go back to the ranch. You're done in and Mother is going to want to see you, that you've not taken some harm from all this riding about the country with broken ribs and half-healed gunshot wounds." Nick was warming to his subject now and beginning to raise his hands and his voice. He thought it probably had more to do with being anxious about what his mother would say, than about concern over his healing ribs and gunshot wounds. "There's nothing back down that trail you need to do that posse can't do as well. They'll find those last riders if they're able."

"They won't find them. They're through either Mariposa or LaGrange by now on fresh horses and long gone."

"Then what do you want, going after them?"

"Not going after them."

That stopped Nick and he could see his brother thinking. Nick studied him while he thought and he gave him a small smile. He liked that Nick tried to understand him and didn't just keep talking at him the way he'd done at first. Now Nick tried to understand what he was saying to him, tried to listen.

"So what are you going back up that trail for?"

"I thought, those dead men. I thought I'd take them into LaGrange would Mr. Preston give me the use of his spare horses. Get them buried."

Nick stepped around the horse so he stood between Heath and the colt so he had to look at Nick and not the horse. "How many dead men we talking about here?" Nick hadn't asked this question of him before, had kept the conversation to the very basic story that Heath had ridden after the girls and gotten them back. None of them had wanted to talk very much about the night and the kidnapping in front of the girls. Heath looked away from his brother over toward the girls, reminded himself that he'd needed to do that killing, needed to get his sister.

"Six. I killed six men last night." He turned away from Nick toward the colt, wanting to feel the warmth of the big horse again, to lean up against all that strength and goodness and courage and feel it against his flesh. Nick's hand on his shoulder stopped him and he stood frozen not looking back at his brother; all of his attention on the horse in front of him.

"You need to go home, Heath. You're worn out. Five days ago you were still lying in that bed not even able to walk down the stairs. You don't need to do any more riding after those men, dead or alive." Nick spoke so quietly and kindly that he stopped and tried to think about what he said. To try and find a place in his head where he could think about his words that wasn't full of dead men.

"I killed all those men. I need to … to…" He didn't know what he needed to do, he just knew he'd left six dead men back down that trail and he couldn't ride back to that ranch as if he hadn't, as if those men hadn't died last night.

"Yeah, you can. You get up on that horse and you ride back to the ranch. You let the posse take care of their bodies. Those men were dead the minute they took Audra. You, me, Jarrod, the posse, didn't matter. Those men were dead." Now Nick had that fierceness that he knew from previous talks, that on-the-edge of angry that amused him and if he was truthful, frightened him a little with its potential for violence. 

"You need to come home. You need to eat and sleep and get back to healing. You did nothing wrong last night. You rescued those girls. Those men were nothing. I didn't say before, not in front of the girls, but they took two girls from that ranch near Rio Vista. The Fairfield posse found them two days later. They'd been very ill done to." Nick had his hand on his good shoulder again, bent down a little to look up into his face, trying to look into his eyes, he knew. But he kept his head bent and his eyes firmly on the ground. Not looking at Nick, not able to meet his eyes, his words hard enough without seeing his face too.

"They were men, Nick. They got up yesterday morning, men and this morning they were food for buzzards because of me." He felt he had to try and make at least Nick understand. He'd not tried with Audra. He didn't want Audra to know about the six dead men, didn’t want her to understand what it had cost for her to go home. But he felt that he had to explain to Nick. That Nick at least had to understand what he'd done to free those girls.

"I don't know that they were men, Heath, and for sure that they died yesterday wasn't because of you. That was because they took those girls. They died because they took the girls." Nick's voice was rising now. He was getting angry and soon he would be yelling about those dead men and the girls would hear him. He turned and walked away toward the horse. He was afraid if he spoke or looked at Nick he would lose his concentration on the horse and start thinking about all those dead bodies. He needed to keep thinking about the horse.

Nick's hand was on his shoulder again, stopping him. "Talk to me, boy." And he kept his hand there, holding Heath waiting on him with that new patience that Nick had learned somewhere in the two weeks Heath had spent laying in that bed in the upstairs of the Barkley's house. Nick had learned some of his mother's waiting kind of patience where he held Heath and waited on his talking, forcing more from his silence then he ever could from his speaking.

He turned and faced Nick and tried again. "I'm full up on dead men, Nick. I can't find anywhere to put remembering those six men." He didn't know how to explain the seeing of those men out of the corner of his eye while he was riding, the feeling of them watching him while he groomed the horse, the sense that those dead men were all around him, watching him, wanting to know why they were dead and he wasn't.

Nick was still now too, his hand resting, a welcome, warm weight on his shoulder. Surprising him, Nick pulled him against his chest and wrapped his arm around him and held him close and warm against his body. He could feel the weight of Nick's face against his head the other man's arms around his body holding him safe.

"You're tired near to death, boy. You need to come home and sleep and eat. Trust me, Heath. There's room for those dead men somewhere. When you're less tired you'll find it. I'll help you find it. Right now you need to remember your sister and those other two girls. Think on them for a bit."

He allowed himself to relax against Nick, marveling that this great man was his brother and cared for him. That he could feel this safe and guarded with this man. He'd never known such a thing was possible. Since he was a small boy, since from before he could really remember, he'd felt the need to watch out for his mama. He'd had to earn money for them to live, hunt so they could eat, be on guard so no one said a bad thing to her. He'd never had anyone would do those things for him, never had anyone to take some of the weight of his life for him. 

He'd never had this feeling in his whole life that someone stronger than him would take care of him, keep him safe. The feeling almost undid him. He again felt the pricking of those tears in his eyes at the tired and the horror, the vision of that man's ruined face when he'd slammed his rifle stock into him, the sound of the air coming out of that boys lungs where his bullet had gone in. He thought if maybe he could just stand here like this with Nick between him and that horror, he could maybe not fall all to pieces. That maybe Nick with all his strength could hold him together.

"Now, we're going to go home from here. The posse will bury those men when they come up to them tomorrow. And somewhere between here and next week we're going to have the talk we should have had a while ago. You're going to give me some of that load you're carrying and let me help you tote it." Nick made no move to pull away, just kept his arms around him, the weight of Nick's face on his head holding him to the ground and in the world.

He said nothing to Nick, having no words for the gift of this brother. He nodded his head against Nick's shoulder and stood still for as long as Nick would hold him safe. Finally, Nick gave him a squeeze and stepped back.

"Now, Mother sent some bandages and liniment and told me I was to dress your shoulder as soon as I caught up with you."

Mrs. Barkley had sent a bandage for his shoulder. Her girl, her Audra, stolen by outlaws and she'd thought of his shoulder and taken time to send for his care. He felt the blood in his face and knew he was blushing. The kindness of that remembering was like Nick's hug a feeling of safe and warm, made him feel…cared for, loved.

Nick had put the three men's saddles thirty feet away from the fire and the girl's bedrolls and now led Heath over to their little segregated campsite. He nodded toward Heath's saddle and while Heath got him self settled and his shirt unbuttoned Nick pulled a small bundle of supplies out of his saddlebag and grabbed his canteen.

Heath pulled his shirt off and looked at his shoulder with some surprise. It had been sore but he was astonished to see it black with bruising and dried blood.

"It looks worse than it is," Nick reassured him, using his hands to tip Heath's torso into the setting sun. "I'll just clean it up a bit where it bled and put some of Mother's special liniment on it. You'll be good as new."

Heath nodded uncertainly, it was for sure pretty sore and it looked scary all discolored, but he smiled at Nick. Nick would know was it something bad and he'd said not. Nick would see it right. He watched his brother gently wash away the dried blood and with feather soft touch apply the stinking liniment.

"It's opened a little in here, Heath, but I'm going to leave it be. Don't shoot that rifle for a few days, should heal back up."

He smiled at Nick for his doctoring, for the kindness of it and its gentleness from this big gruff man. Nick handed him a clean shirt he'd carried over and nodded toward the pond. 

"You go get cleaned up, you'll feel better. We need to go eat some of that dinner those girls are burning over there." Nick smiled at him and he gave him another lopsided smile in return.

The washing felt good and the being clean even better. Mrs. Barkley had sent him a clean shirt. He thought he'd been tossed one of Nick's shirts, but it fit, so no way it belonged to Nick. Shirt was a red color and smelled of starch and soap, another new shirt. He thought that made two shirts Mrs. Barkley had bought him and he'd not been living there more than three weeks. He thought at this rate he'd have so many clothes he wouldn't be able to fit them all in his saddlebags. He admired the color of the shirt, like a bright sunset. It was beautiful. He never thought to have a shirt with so much color.

Audra pulled him away from his admiration of the shirt, "Heath, we got supper done. Why don't you come eat?" She put her hand on his arm, but no smile on her face. He thought the no smile was his fault and gave her a small smile to let her know he was all right.

"Come and eat. You didn't eat anything all day but that biscuit this morning."

He nodded and looked off to the east toward the mountains with the last of the setting sun shining on their western slope. He looked down at the shirt again and felt the fabric with his hand remembering his pleasure. The pleasure a living man got from the setting of the sun, a new shirt, a dinner prepared by his sister. He was surprised to find he was hungry. Didn't matter what kind of horror was around a man his body still got hungry, still got tired and no matter how a man felt about closing his eyes, his body still wanted to sleep.

They sat around the fire in the early evening darkness talking of the news from Stockton revisiting who was at the Preston Ranch waiting for them all, who was in the posse riding to meet them. Audra talked about the party again, talked to Susan who this evening talked back already putting the previous night's ride and fear behind her, sounding now like the young girl she was, safe in her father's arms.

Mr. Preston asked him about the colt, "Looks like the colt gave you a good ride."

"I left the grulla about twenty miles from the ranch."

"We saw him. He looked none the worse, just tired."

He nodded his head to Mr. Preston. He was sure that grulla was tired, remembering how hard he'd pushed the horse, driving him on when the horse was lathered and wanting to stop, pushing him, forcing him to run when the horse hadn't thought he could. He was pleased he'd stopped him in time, hadn't done him permanent harm. He looked off toward the grazing bay, hobbled not far from the fire. Maybe he hadn't needed the grulla; maybe the bay could have done the whole run with him on his back. 

"Colt gave a good run though didn't he?" Preston asked again.

"Come on, Steven, we all know that's a good colt." Nick had a slightly annoyed sound to his voice now, raised a bit above the level of the conversation had gone before and he looked over at him, wondering what had set him going.

Preston just smiled at Nick who shook his head and turned away from the older man and looked at Heath too now.

"He never faltered."

"Some horses are like that. Doesn't matter how hard it is, they just do it." Preston turned his gaze from Heath now, looking at Nick. "Some men, too. You find a horse or a man like that you always know, no matter what happens, how hard things get, you know you can rely on them. You don't even have to ask, you just got a need and they're there. Easy to kill a horse like that, easy to ask for more than they got to give, to just run them to death, because a horse like that, you ask and he'll give. I suspect it would be the same with that kind of man. I don't know for sure. I haven't met very many men like that, not many horses either. But I suspect it’s the same; either one, man or horse with that kind of courage, they don't measure the cost of a thing. They just do it if it needs doing." 

Preston looked away from Nick and over at Heath again, not saying anything now just looking at him. Finally, he sort of nodded to himself in the flickering firelight and said, "Well, getting late. Guess I'll let you girls sleep."

Preston and Nick assigned the watches between the two of them. Heath said he'd take a watch and after a moment's hesitation Nick agreed giving him the first one. Heath nodded and moved off into the night to his saddle and made up his bedroll beside Nick's, close to his brother's bed knowing Nick would wake him if he spoke to his dead in his sleep. He wondered at himself. Less than a month and he relied upon this man to watch his back awake and asleep. He wondered how he'd come to trust this man so quickly with everything that he had with the things he held dearest, his fear and his shame.

His watch was not alone, Nick sat beside him some forty feet from the two sleeping places leaning against a cottonwood tree, the two men shoulder to shoulder not speaking just sitting in the dark together. Finally, after several hours Nick told him to go sleep he'd watch alone, Heath needed to sleep.

"I'll sleep here, Nick." Heath said and got to his feet and walked back to his bedroll and grabbed his blanket before walking back to his brother. He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and lay down on the ground a few feet from Nick. Nick knew about dark things in the night and would keep him from waking anyone with his fear and guilt.

When he woke in the morning Nick was asleep beside him, his back against Heath's back snoring quietly. Heath didn't know if Nick had needed to wake him in the night or if just the knowing Nick was there and the tired had been enough to keep him safe in his sleep. He woke rested and moving easier got to his feet quietly and wandered off to gather more wood for a morning fire. 

The girls were tired and slow to wake in the morning and none of the men had the heart to hurry them. He and Nick had horses gathered and cleaned up and fed before the first girl stirred. Mr. Preston finally woke all three with the smell of bacon and coffee and they were on the horses and started down the trail by the time the sun cleared the Sierras.

They met the posse in the late forenoon. The posse riding at a steady jog and them riding at a walk on still tired horses with tired girls. Mrs. Preston had sent britches and shirts for the girls and they didn't look anything like the bright party girls of the kidnapping. These were the dark-clothed, serious girls of the rescue and he thought they were even more beautiful in their courage and resolve as they rode home, smiling and chattering to each other. He thought women were maybe the bravest, no guns or fists to defend themselves, just faith in their men and in the goodness of strangers to keep them safe. 

Nick was right. Those villains had been dead as soon as they took Audra. No way any of her brothers would have let them go far. He wondered for the first time about the three men who'd kept riding. He wondered had they just kept riding, should he go kill them for taking his sister, would they come back to kill him for their brother's death. He wondered about a time after this rescue, he wondered about the future for the first time since he'd moved that stove off the cellar in the Preston's kitchen.

He thought on all the killing while Nick and Mr. Preston spoke to the posse. Pointed at him and talked to the posse some more. He sat his horse on the outside edge of the group, holding his three spare horses not wanting any part of the long ride those men would take to Mariposa and the long ride they would take home no outlaws to show for their trouble, those men long gone into the mountains.

"You're still very quiet." Audra pulled rein beside him, her horse facing opposite to the beautiful bay colt so they were face to face and close enough he could see that for all her chatter and smiling she was near as worn as he was. He thought that a lot of that chatter had been for the other two girls, Susan so young and so afraid before her father came, Cecilia with only that fierce mother who couldn't come hunting her girl in a posse. He smiled at his sister, thinking she was for sure the brightest of the Barkleys, shinning like a star even in her trail dust and old boy's clothes and maybe the bravest Barkley too.

"Nothing to say, you can't say better." He gave her a smile so she'd smile back at him and he could see her eyes sparkle again, wishing he'd been able to catch those bandits sooner for his sister, so she didn't need to ride so far to get home.

Nick rode over to them as the posse left in the dust and the noise of saddles and horses and men. "We'll be at Preston's place tomorrow. We can get fresh horses there and be home by nightfall." 

Heath nodded doing the arithmetic of miles traveled and miles to go and tired horses in his head. He thought on the remounts left in Preston's remuda and gently stroked the bay. He wished he didn't need a different horse to see him home. He thought with the last two days' easy riding the bay would be well rested by the time they reached Preston's him being the kind of horse could do a fifty mile run one day and another the next and maybe another the third. He looked at Preston who'd not said anything to him about his staying on the bay for the ride back to the ranch and thought it was kind of the man to let him keep riding the colt. But he knew he wouldn't be riding the colt back to Barkley's a man didn't loan a colt like this unless maybe nine men had kidnapped his daughter and were riding to Mexico. A colt like this didn't just naturally end up being loaned out but rather lived in a distant remuda where no ranch hand would accidentally on purpose maybe ride him.

He sat a little deeper in the saddle and the bay moved out, following the rest of the riders, reins looped around his neck and three spare horses in tow. Would take a little time before he forgot this horse. He was glad that when he remembered this ride that besides his fear for Audra and his remorse at killing those men he would also have the remembering of the courage of this horse to temper that other sadness.

Their last night on the trail was twenty miles east and a little south of Preston's place at a small stream that was already near gone from the dry time. Heath felt easy in the saddle the worse of the pain in his shoulder past whether from Mrs. Barkley's liniment or knowing he was with Nick and Audra and headed to the ranch he wasn't sure. Maybe just from not shooting anyone all day. 

They made camp in a replay of the previous afternoon, Nick helping him with the horses, Mr. Preston helping the girls with the fire and setting up the camp. They'd stopped riding early the horses still tired and needing to graze not enough left to them for another twenty miles that day.

He figured it for his last night with the bay and stood, brushing him after he'd finished with the other horses. Letting the colt loose to graze as he stood with him, brushing his back not thinking of anything just enjoying the quiet of the afternoon between listening to Nick talk from where he was leaning on the horse's back across from him. Feeling easy in his mind for the first time in days between the goodness of the colt and the company of Nick.

He was so lost in his brushing and listening he didn't hear Preston walk up to him, and was surprised enough that he shied when the man spoke to him.

"Boy, I'd like to speak to you for a minute there."

Heath turned from where he was standing mindlessly brushing the colt's already straightened mane, to face Mr. Preston, who was walking around the colt his hand on the horse's rump.

"Nick, could you give us a minute so we can talk? I got something needs saying to the boy."

"He's my brother. Anything you got to say to him, you can say to me too." Nick rocked back on his heels; his head raised looking down at the shorter man.

"Now don't get your britches in a knot. I'm just wanting to talk to him about the colt."

"There's nothing wrong with the colt. You see something wrong with him, I'll buy him off you and make it right." Now Nick was positively glowering. Heath looked at him amused. He'd spent most of his life wishing he had someone to take his side when folks came after him, now here was Nick sticking up for him whether he needed the help or not. He wasn't sure he liked it as much as he'd thought he would, all that ready for a fight fair wore a man out.

"I wouldn't sell you this colt two years ago when you tried to buy him and he's not for sale now, and he'll never be for sale I got anything to say about it. So move off Nick and let me talk to the boy."

"He's got a name. He's my brother, Heath."

"Then let me speak to Heath."

"Then I'll say what I said before. You got anything to say to him, he's my brother you can say it to me too."

"It's got nothing to do with you, Nick. This is between me and the boy… between me and Heath." Mr. Preston glanced at him almost apologetically at that last part.

Nick was in full voice now, all his Barkley coming to the fore and Heath decided they could spend the whole night at this and none of them the wiser for it.

"It's fine, Nick."

Nick paused for a second looking at Heath consideringly and then turning his gaze back to Mr. Preston said, "He's my brother, Steve, the same as Jarrod."

"I understand you, Nick." Mr. Preston just stood his hand on the colt's rump his eyes on Nick, waiting. Finally, after having a go at out staring Preston, Nick nodded and walked back over to where the three girls sat around the fire, picking up pieces of downed cottonwood as he walked.

Preston waited until Nick was all the way back to the fire, watching him walk, absently stroking the horse, in no hurry to talk now that he had his chance. Eventually he turned and faced Heath and stood looking at him. No stranger to long silences, Heath waited, leaning against the colt, thinking if that colt took a step they'd be having this conversation lying on the ground.

"I came out to California in '49 for the gold. Never had any money, thought maybe I'd strike it rich in the fields." Preston smiled at him and then looked away toward the mountains. "Didn't, of course, or at least not in the way I expected to. I found a little color though and traded my claim for four hundred acres of land in the valley. I don’t know did that color pan out or what, but that four hundred acres was surely gold for me." Preston paused again and walked around the colt so he was facing Heath across the horse's back.

"I met a woman and married. All late in life for me, but maybe finer because I'd waited longer for it, don't know, but it seemed so. Then when everything was as fine as it could be, well my Susan was born." Now he looked over to the three girls and Nick, all-laughing about something.

"What I'm trying to say is I'm not a fancy spoken man. I don’t have a lot of words to try and explain what I want to say to you about what you did. About your saving Susan." He looked up at Heath, seemed to want something said to him at this point.

"No thanks needed, sir."

He nodded at that and stroked the back of the colt and reached over to flip the horse's mane where part of it had fallen to the off side. 

"I reckon you couldn’t have done what you did without this horse?" The man waited on that one. Waited Heath out until finally he answered him.

"Reckon not."

Preston nodded at that apparently satisfied.

"I reckon this horse partly saved my girl and those other two girls, Cecilia and Audra." Preston waited again.

"Yes, sir."

"So the way I see it this horse, he saved my girl. That makes this horse something special to me. I can't take the horse maybe saved my girl and go round up cattle on him. Can't let some ranch hand take him into town on a Saturday night, leave him tied in the street."

Heath thought about that for a spell as the two men stood in silence. He hadn't thought about how a man might think on a horse had done him such a service, saving his daughter. He thought about the bay giving him that hard gallop at the end so he could kill that man had been leading Susan's horse. How he'd squeezed his heels into that young horse and how after five hours of running, three of them carrying him, the horse had just given more. He thought it made this a special horse but he thought it would make him a horse a man would want to keep and ride everyday. He couldn't understand what Mr. Preston was trying to say about the horse. So he didn't say anything. He'd wait the man out see if he could explain his thoughts about the horse a little clearer.

"So I reckon you'd best just keep this horse. I reckon how you and this horse, well you belong together. You're alike you and that horse and after that ride you two had….you should be together."

Heath scratched the colt over the withers with his fingers for a moment and then straightened and walked away from the colt and the man.

"Don't owe me anything."

"WHOA, BOY. Don't you walk away from me while I'm explaining myself to you."

He paused for a second and then turned back to the man.

"You don't owe me anything."

"Now, see that's me. I said I wasn't a fancy spoken man and now I've gone and made you angry. And pretty soon Nick will be over here like a mama bear protecting his cub."

That was such an apt description of Nick a few minutes ago that he smiled at Mr. Preston and felt some of the tension go. 

"I'm not paying you for getting my girl back with that colt. Isn't enough money or colts in the world to pay you for getting my girl back. What I'm saying is, I want you to have that colt because of what you two did that night. Because of who you two are, you and that colt."

He didn't understand what the man was trying to tell him and didn't know if it was because the man couldn't explain it or he was just too tired and stupid to understand. He understood the man wanted to give him about the finest horse he'd ever seen, and he for sure didn't see how he could take him.

"Every time I see that colt, the rest of my life I'll think to myself, I should have been on his back going for my girl and I wasn't, you were. I'll think I let those men take my girl and I didn't stop them, you did. Every time I see that colt I'll think myself less of a man because I didn't make that ride for my girl. So you take that colt because you were man enough to get on him and do what needed doing. You understand now, boy?"

Heath stood looking down at the ground at his feet thinking what the man had said.

"You were trapped in that cellar," he offered him, looking up into his face.

"And when you got us out?"

He didn't say anything to that, thinking on Mrs. Preston, her arms around this man, her crying and Mr. Preston saying the girls were going to Tracy, and looked back down at the ground.

"You understand me now, boy?"

He didn't say anything, just nodded his head.

Preston came around the horse and put his hand on his shoulder and waited until Heath looked up at him and then smiled and nodded his head.

"Now, I'm going to tell you one more thing, boy. When you’re an old man like me and you look back on all of the horses you've ever owned or ridden, you're going to know that bay is the finest horse you ever saw." The pride was evident now in Preston's face as he straightened a bit under Heath's gaze.

"Don't need to be an old man to know that."

"That's done, Heath Barkley and I'm obliged to you." Preston nodded to him again and walked away. Heath stood watching the old man walk back toward the fire and then looked across at the bay grazing in the darkening evening. He guessed he did understand that old man not wanting to remember every time he saw the horse that he could have saved his daughter and hadn't tried. But he thought, had the bay been his, he would have tried to get over that feeling.

Nick walked up to him, passing Preston without a word.

"You all right?"

"I'm fine, Nick."

Nick nodded at that and then stood, waiting he knew for him to tell him what Mr. Preston had wanted with him. He thought on that as he messed with the colt's mane, pulling out little bits of tangle until the horse picked up his head and looked around at him, lipping at his fingers. He messed with the horse a bit more not looking at Nick, thinking about the colt. Thinking about owning a horse like this, wondering that in his whole life he'd never owned anything like this colt and here he was living with the Barkleys and owning the finest horse he'd ever seen all at the same time. 

He wondered if this feeling he had just at this very moment, this feeling that if he jumped from a very high place he might fly, if he could hold this feeling for later when those dead men in the night tried to pull him down? Could he maybe think about Nick and Audra and this colt and maybe just fly above all that death. Could the happy of this day maybe hold him through the darkness of his night?

"So?"

He smiled at Nick. He thought that Nick, standing there quiet all those two minutes, trying so hard to wait him out maybe deserved him to answer. He knew Nick would never be a quiet man who thought about things before he started talking about them, but he thought Nick was trying awful hard to give him some room in his head. That Nick was trying not to crowd him with too many questions about Mr. Preston, dead outlaws, fighting in wars and scars on his back. He thought maybe Nick was the finest man he'd ever met and did Nick need to know about Mr. Preston and Heath he didn't mind to tell him. Tell him what had been said, so far as it was his to tell. He thought some part of the telling was Mr. Preston's story and not his to share with Nick, but he thought the part Nick would want to know was something he could tell him.

"He gave me the colt. Said not for the saving or the killing but for the ride." He ran his hand down the colt's cheek from where the young horse was leaning his forehead against his chest and wondered when he and that colt had gotten to liking each other so much. He knew why he liked the colt, but couldn't figure how that horse had come to like a man had ridden him as hard as he had that long night?

"He gave you…I'll be …. He tell you I been trying to buy this colt off him for two years?" Now it was Nick's turn to stand with his hand on the colt's back looking first at Heath and then across the clearing at Mr. Preston. Preston must have felt Nick's look, or known it would be coming because he faced around at them and returned Nick look for look. 

"I gave him to the boy, Nick Barkley. I told you I'd never sell that colt."

Nick rolled back on his heels and gave that great Nick laugh that Heath loved. That laugh that had no pain or fear or sorrow in it only joy and humor. Nick stepped back from the colt to admire him now he was Heath's horse and not Preston's, as if in the changing of ownership there might have been some change in the horse. He walked around the horse slowly, admiring him like he was going to maybe buy him.

"I'll buy him off you, Heath. I'll give you a fair price, which would be a big price indeed." Nick looked at him, all serious now, like there would actually be a horse trade done this day.

He smiled at his brother both men knowing that horses like this bay weren't sold, at least not in an afternoon on the trail between friends. Maybe someone's child was dying and needed medicine or the bank was foreclosing on the ranch, maybe then, but not between brothers on the trail on a warm spring afternoon. So he smiled at his brother sharing this joy as he'd shared his sorrow earlier, the one made lighter and the other sweeter by having a brother to share it with.


	7. Chapter 7

He smiled at his brother both men knowing that horses like this bay weren't sold, at least not in an afternoon on the trail between friends. Maybe someone's child was dying and needed medicine or the bank was foreclosing on the ranch, maybe then, but not between brothers on the trail on a warm spring afternoon. So he smiled at his brother sharing this joy as he'd shared his sorrow earlier, the one made lighter and the other sweeter by having a brother to share it with.

In the morning they gave the spare horses to Mr. Preston and Susan and Cecilia to lead, and left the two Preston's and Cecilia Holland headed north and east while they headed due north for home. 

Heath played with the word in his head as he rode: Home. All during the time he'd ridden for Mr. Russell with the mail and later during the war and that awful trip home from Alabama at its end he'd thought of that little cabin in Strawberry as home. The day his mama died though he'd lost both her and his home. He still had Miss Rachel and Aunt Hannah there but it wasn't home any more. He'd never really expected to have another home. Cowboys like him, working job to job, hardly enough money to buy shells and tobacco didn't have homes; they had beds in forgettable bunkhouses and line shacks. Now here he was going home again and someone there who cared when he arrived, remembering Mrs. Barkley and her sending of the liniment and the shirt.

The bay stepped quickly past a long stick in the trail, snorting and pulling his head up so Heath almost laughed at the colt, who feeling rested now and not pulling those three other horses was acting his age and a little foolish. He stroked the horse's neck and caught Nick's eye and smiled just for the pleasure of the horse and the day and the going home. Audra laughed at him as he let the colt dance a bit in the trail his neck bowed half-passing in a little horse dance of youth and of morning coolness. Nick brought his horse along side and they put the two horses into a quick trot side by side, stirrups rubbing, horses' necks bowed, stepping big. Audra joined them and they rode three abreast, the horses matching strides and stepping out boldly with the enthusiasm of the company.

After a few minutes they pulled the three horses back down to a slower jog, Audra and Nick laughing outright and him smiling at the pleasure of the morning and the company and the marvel of the horse he rode. He listened to Nick and Audra talk of baths and food and the pleasures of being back home. He allowed their words to wrap him in the protection of their world of plentiful food and clean beds and loving family until he too felt safe and warm. 

Audra asked him what he was going to call the bay and he smiled at her. "You name him."

In the next half an hour she tried out about thirty names on the two men who laughed and teased her gently for being a girl and being silly. Finally, she said, "Call him Charger. You were our knight in shinning armor rescuing us so you should have a charger."

Nick snorted at that and nearly fell out of his saddle laughing about knights in dusty boots rescuing girls in torn party dresses. Audra put on her sulky face and asked Nick what he could possibly know about knights being such a knave?

"It's a good name, Sis. Thanks." Heath told her, smiling in spite of himself, but remembering also days of playing King Arthur and Robin Hood with his mama in an old redwood grove and thought it was a brave name for the colt.

After two hours riding they crossed onto Barkley range and Nick's conversation turned to the ranch, condition of the ground and the grass, what stock he would run and where. Nick pointed out features of the ground and spoke of other pastures and his plans for the spring work. The sharing of the ranch and the work gave Heath a feeling of joy that this life was his life, this brother his brother. He had work to do and a place to do it where the work mattered and, he glanced at his brother and his sister, where he mattered. He bowed his head tears stinging his eyes again at this sharing of the ride and the ranch. He wondered if every time one of these people spoke to him would he be smiling or crying and felt a fool, but smiled anyway too happy not to share it with the world.

They stopped at noon and ate cold bacon left from breakfast and an apple each, the last of the trail food packed for Mr. Preston and Nick. Audra promised them a great cake for dinner the next day that she would cook herself to celebrate their return. Nick teased her how awful her cooking was and she pouted dramatically before they both laughed and he joined, uncertain where the joke was but loving that they shared it with him.

Nick said they would be home before dinner and they kept the horses at a slow jog, covering the miles and pushing the horses a bit knowing they could have a long rest at the end of the ride. Audra was explaining that she would need a ride to town the next day or the day after to go see Cecilia and make sure she was all right after their adventure. Nick said she really wanted to go to get a new dress to replace the one stuffed in her saddlebag. Heath smiled at that, knowing it was probably true and had turned to say something about driving her when a shot rang out and the three horses jumped to run. 

He pulled the colt up hard and jumped out of the saddle, pulling Audra with him between horses. Holding the colt's right rein so the young horse spun with him and he could grab the rifle from the scabbard with his right hand as he pushed Audra to the ground. Nick's gelding was spinning as he looked for the shooters and he yelled at him to get off the horse, thinking typical cavalryman, always trying to fight on the back of a moving horse. As two more shots rang out, he twisted the headstall on Audra's horse and grabbed his off foreleg bringing him to the ground hard and threw himself across the horse's head to hold him there.

"Get down, Audra," and clever girl that she was, she got down beside him protected from the shooters by the horse's body. Whoever was shooting at them was firing away with little thought of ammunition and he had no trouble spotting two of the shooters' positions not much more than a hundred and fifty yards to their east in a low spot beyond a small rise in the ground. That much fast shooting was pocking the dirt all around them but not hitting much. Nick was on the ground by now having hit the colt and his gelding to drive them off and landing behind the belly of the down horse shooting with his sidearm at their assailants.

He thought all that shooting felt awful desperate and cover for something and rolled on his back to look off to the west for whoever they were trying to cover, and saw a lone man, rising up to his knees aiming a rifle at their backs. He shot him in the body and turned back to the other two shooters, thinking three men felt like those last three riders had maybe not kept going south from Mariposa. That maybe those three men had not even gone to Mariposa, had maybe found some courage in the night and some desire for revenge for the boy they'd left to die alone on the trail.

He drew a bead on the right hand shooter and waited for him to rise up and look to see what had become of the third man. When he saw his rifle move, he took up the slack on the trigger and when he saw his face rise up from the dirt, shot him in the head. He threw Nick his side arm and while Nick laid down a fusillade of mostly useless handgun fire, he pulled Audra onto the head of the horse and sprinted off to the north. When the last man rose to shoot him he was ready, rifle on his shoulder and shot him too, needing to put the bullet in his body since running as he was, his aim just wasn't that sure.

He kept running until he was behind the two men and could see they were both done shooting; one done breathing his face gone to his bullet, and the second shot low in the chest and nearly all done, too. He stood looking at the man with no face while he caught his breath from the running, and the breathlessness the fear and surprise and horror of battle always left behind.

Nick came trotting up behind him, reloading his gun as he came. "My word, boy, I have never in my life seen anyone like you in a fight." 

Nick returned Heath's reloaded side arm and stood beside him looking at the two men both done breathing now. "You move twice as fast as any man I've ever seen and I know I've never seen anyone who can out shoot you in a fight." Heath looked up from the faceless body and off to the east. He figured they'd probably left their horses off that way; wouldn't want to walk any further than they needed to. He walked back down to where Audra was still lying across the head of her horse.

"He's hit, Heath. I can't tell how badly. I didn't want to let him get up." 

He nodded and took her place holding the gelding's head to the ground while she stood up. He could see blood on the horse from a couple of wounds and on his nose from a bullet in his lungs and gently stroked his cheek and whispered softly to the gelding as he stepped away, allowing the horse to surge to his feet. He was hit twice in the rump and once in the shoulder through to the lungs he thought. The horse stood shaking, his head down, his nose nearly in the dust, blood pooling in front of him. Heath pulled the saddle off him and shot him in the head with his handgun, not having anything he could say to the horse except he'd needed to lay him down there so his sister didn't get shot. He was a horse and his sister needed cover so the horse had to die.

The colt and Nick's chocolate gelding were only a hundred yards down the trail, standing and were no trouble to catch. He led the gelding back to Nick and then rode the colt up over the hill to the east and found the three horses of the bushwhackers ground tied in a swale a quarter a mile away. They didn't have Mr. Preston's rocking P brand but they all had the same brand so he guessed the three remaining outlaws from the previous night had found another ranch and stolen more horses. The horses were tired and one was lame in the front, all three drawn from too much riding and not enough feed or water. He led them back to Nick and Audra.

Nick was kneeling down by the two dead men, going through their pockets when he rode up. He dismounted and threw Audra’s saddle up on one of the two sound horses and tied it in place so they could get it back to the ranch. He pulled the bedroll off another saddle and walked up to Nick. They dragged the two men close together and covered them with one blanket.

"I'll send a couple of hands back to get them when we get home," Nick said, standing and looking at the covered pile. "You figure it’s the rest of those bank robbers?"

He shrugged, couldn't think that there were that many men around, wanting to kill him but who knew. A man done as much killing as he had, was always men with a reason to shoot him. He and Nick walked back down to Audra and stood for a minute beside the dead horse, all of them unsure what to say.

"I think you saved me again, Heath." Audra couldn't manage a smile this time but put her arms around his waist and gave him a hug. He kissed the top of her head and put his sore arm around her, holding his reins and the rifle in the other hand away from her body. After a minute he let her go, and stepped away from her and turned to load his rifle. He felt in his pocket for loose shells and stood for a second looking at the hateful thing and the shells in his hand. He started trying to put the shells in the rifle but his hand was shaking so hard he couldn't manage to get it done. He stopped and looked off to the mountains for a second and blew out a lung full of air. Waiting on his body to realize it wasn't dying today and didn't need to kill anyone else.

Nick put his hand on his shoulder and stepped between him and the mountains. "Needed doing and you did it."

He nodded to him and when his hand was still shaking, put the shells back in his pocket and the rifle back in the scabbard. He still had two rounds in the rifle, surely he wouldn't need to kill more than two more men today and he could wait on the loading.

He grabbed another blanket off a spare horse for the third body. He figured he'd killed these men the least he could do was walk over and look at their bodies. He wouldn't want them to come haunting his dreams and him not recognize them. He figured he wouldn't have any trouble recognizing that man with no face. The other two, well they might get lost in the crowd. He walked away from his brother and sister off to the west to the third body hardly aware of Nick walking beside him.

"How'd you know he was there?"

He looked down at the man and thought he was maybe one of the Adam Staller's brothers: for sure had the look of him, the same soft face and the same reddish hair spread around his head in the dust. He threw the blanket out and Nick caught the end of it and helped him cover the body. He stood for a minute with his head bowed. He wondered was this all the boys Mrs. Staller had? Had he killed all her sons? Was she sitting in some cabin somewhere wondering where her sons were and they were all dead?

"They must have gotten fresh horses somewhere and ridden back and picked up our trail. Must have waited until we split with Preston to make their move." Nick had his hand on his shoulder again, turning him back toward Audra and their horses.

He sure hoped this was the last of the Stallers. He hoped maybe he could have a few days now when he didn't need to kill anyone. He rubbed at his shoulder as he walked back down the little hill with Nick beside him not surprised to see a little blood on his hand but sure sorry to see it on the front of his shirt. He thought maybe Mrs. Barkley had had the right of it with the red colored shirt. Blood wouldn't ruin this shirt, he could bleed all over this shirt and it would be just fine.

Nick grabbed his wrist and stopped his walking, pulling on his wrist until he turned and could see his bloody shirt.

"You get hit?"

He shook his head and tried to keep walking but Nick had a hold of him now and wouldn't let go.

"Stop, while I look at your shoulder."

He didn't want to stop. He wanted to get back on the horse and keep riding. He didn't want to see that dead horse and those three dead men. He didn't want to mess with sore shoulders and empty rifles and dead outlaws. He wanted to go home to some place where there wasn't any killing, where people who woke up in the morning went to bed in the night and didn't die or kill anyone.

Nick tried to hold him, stop him but he was suddenly full of fury so that he couldn’t stop walking, couldn't mess with Nick and his kindness and his talking. He pulled his wrist loose and kept walking to where Audra stood surrounded by horses living and dead. He picked up the reins of the bay colt and the loose reins of the two outlaw horses and climbed back into the colt's saddle and pushed the colt into a reluctant jog away from the other horses, dragging the two outlaw horses with him. He pushed them hard until they were four hundred yards down the trail and then he stopped. He couldn't stay there with all that death but he couldn't ride away from Nick and Audra either. So he stopped and he waited, looking off toward the mountains and wondered when he'd lost his ability to ride away, when had he gotten so caught up in Barkleys that he couldn't ride away when he needed to?


	8. Chapter 8

They rode in silence mostly, all of the fun and high spirits of the morning gone in the death of the early afternoon. Audra silent again and the glow gone from her eyes so that she rode tired in her saddle and he thought maybe that was his fault too, that he couldn't say anything to her, couldn't make light of what had happened. Nick talked a bit about the three men being the rest of the outlaw gang and them needing to look in the saddlebags, see if the money from the bank robbery was there. But neither he nor Audra answered him and after a while Nick was quiet too, the three of them riding silently.

They came up to the house in the late afternoon, four hours after the ambush. Mrs. Barkley was sitting on the front porch waiting for them and met the horses in the roadway in front of the house. Audra was out of the saddle and in her mother's arms while the horses were still walking up the road. Mrs. Barkley held her girl and looked at him and Nick over her bent shoulders and smiled, tears in her eyes her hands on Audra's back in that mess of golden hair. Stroking Audra, she smiled at them and then bent to bury her face in Audra's hair, the two of them crying now as women did when great things happened.

The Mexican hand from the home barn met them in the yard to take the horses. Heath stepped out of the bay's saddle and walked toward the barn leading the colt and the two rider-less horses, picking up Audra's horse's bridle as he passed him.

Nick said, "Leave them come in the house. Ciego will take care of the horses."

He stepped around Nick and continued to the barn leading the colt and the three spare horses. This homecoming was for family. He wanted to leave the Barkleys to share their joy at Audra's safe return without his specter at the meeting. He would take his time with the horses and go in later when they were ready for him, or as ready as they could be. He didn't meet Nick's eyes as the other man made to follow him to the barn.

"Nick," Mrs. Barkley called and Heath sent her a brief glance of thanks as he continued toward the barn. She understood this was a time for family, she'd see Nick right, and he could escape to the barn and the company of horses who'd ask no questions of him.

He took his time grooming the horses, sorting the saddles to be returned to Preston's and saddles that belonged to dead outlaws. He found a saddlebag full of cash and guessed these were indeed the bank robbers from Fairfield. He threw the saddlebags over his shoulder and led the colt out to a small paddock behind the barn and turned him out with the loose outlaw horses. He stood leaning on the corral fence watching the horses move around, noses down, looking for some piece of grass overlooked by all the horses that had gone before them. Ciego put out hay in piles around the corral and the sun began to set and he stood leaning on the fence watching the horses.

He was so wrapped in his study of the horses, keeping all of his attention on the horses, so that there wasn't room in his head for any other thoughts that he jumped when Mrs. Barkley's arm came around his waist.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you." She smiled at him and then turned her attention to the horses. "He's beautiful. Nick said Steven gave him to you."

He smiled at her, as best he could, before turning his head back to the horses. It was taking all of his concentration to keep the horses in his mind and her presence was breaking that focus. He needed time to get the horses back in the front of his head but she kept talking at him, pulling him from the horses back into Barkleys.

"Audra's fine. Tired, but fine. She's upstairs taking a bath and picking out a dress for dinner." He glanced at her and saw she was looking up directly at him a smile on her face. He looked back at the horses, gripping the top rail of the fence tightly. The one horse was very sore in the front. He'd take him into the barn later and put a poultice on that leg, looked like he was throwing a splint. Not much he could do about that but he could ease the pain. 

"Nick told us what you did. How you rescued the girls…" She was quiet now and when he glanced at her again saw she was still looking at him, he could feel her arm around his waist still. He wanted to move away from her, put some distance between them but he couldn't move, couldn't leave the warmth of that arm.

"When Tom and I first came here, oh, twenty years ago and more. Nick and Jarrod were both boys. There was just us, and Duke McCall, and an older hand named O'Neil. We were attacked by a group of bandits, trying to run us off the ranch. There was an awful fight, it lasted all night with us all in that cabin over there, the men shooting out the windows, me loading rifles and trying to shelter the boys." She was silent again he suspected lost in the memory of that time and he tried to lose himself in her story as well, let her take him with her into her past.

"In the morning they were gone and four of them were dead. Two of them right in the middle of where that paddock is now. I was so angry. They could have killed my boys, had intended to kill my husband, and well who knows what else they intended. I was so angry. I wanted Tom to take those bodies and just dump them off the edge of our property. I wanted them away from me and mine." She was quiet again and he looked at her, turning his back to the horses and the place those dead bandits had laid so he could look at her fully in the fading light. Her arm slipped from around his waist as he turned so her hand rested on his forearm, holding him still but not so closely.

"Tom buried them up there on the hill in the little graveyard." She nodded her head off to the east where he'd seen the little graveyard. "I didn't want them there. O'Neil's wife, Millie, was buried there; she'd been my friend; and her baby. I didn't want those awful men buried near me or near my friends." She'd looked away from him toward that old burial ground. "You see I thought there was a difference. I thought Millie and that baby were good people, my friends; and those men were awful villains. I didn't understand. Oh, I was young and I was angry and I had been very frightened, but still I didn't understand. It took years before I understood, before I could thank Tom for burying those men there, where I would see them each time I went into that little cemetery to tend my friends' graves and the other graves that came with the passing years."

They were both silent for so long he thought her story was finished, but she stepped closer to him and wrapped both her arms around his waist and he could feel her hands on his back. "I don't know how you came to understand this. You're so young but you understand what Nick and Audra don't and what I didn't. You know that those were men that died back there on that trail and all those years ago in this ranch yard. That they did evil things for reasons we'll never understand, but they were still men, full of the same wonderful things that all men have, love and joy and sorrow. That when those men died all that miracle of life died with them and that their passing is an ending of what might have been." 

He couldn't say anything. He'd not been able to understand the great sorrow that was consuming him and he thought, maybe she'd had the words for a part of it. He didn't know if that made the pain greater or less that she said these things. But he had no words to give her back and just stood there a great hulk of sadness and silence. 

"But this wasn't just you, Heath. Just as you're right to mourn the passing of these men you also have to allow that they were men. That they chose the path they followed. That they chose to take Audra and those other girls, rob that bank and attack you on the road. They, not you, chose that road of violence and death. You're no more guilty here than the gun that fired the shell or the horses that carried them to the Preston's. They chose this life that ended in this dying, not you. You rather chose the actions that saved all of your lives that prevented an awful tragedy and brought you all home. That you were there at Preston's and on the ride home is something for which I will always thank God. That your skill saved Audra and Nick and you, is a wondrous thing, a gift from the Lord, a blessing."

A blessing? His awful skill with rifle and handgun that had destroyed so many men, a gift from God? He shook his head ruefully. He'd thought it a curse, that where other men might miss he never did. That where other men might be sent to kill an enemy and come back without the stain of that blood on their hands, he never did. She had both arms around him again and her head against his chest speaking into his bloody shirt. 

"Evil men died. Sometimes good men have to kill to protect others against evil. I'm so sorry you had to do that, Heath. I'm so sorry you had to do that and I'm so glad you were there to save my family, all of our families." He realized that she was crying and tentatively put his good arm around her; fearful of too much familiarity with this formidable woman but wanting to try and share some of the comfort she was giving him.

They stood thus for a few minutes neither saying anything more, just standing, sharing the warmth of their contact and the quiet of the early evening darkness. She stepped away from him and put her palm against the side of his face, her other hand on his arm. "It takes such strength to feel the pain that we cause and do what needs to be done anyway. I see some of Tom's compassion in my other children, but it's always mixed with my fierceness. In you I see all of his compassion and more. That must have been your mother, that Tom's compassion should be mixed with such love and gentleness, rather than my fierce anger. I wish I could have met her."

He looked over her head to the east and the mountains, toward what had been his home. He'd never wondered why, when other men gloried in the violence and the killing it had only ever brought him sorrow and pain. He'd thought it was because he was young and weak. He thought about his mother and her love and gentleness that had never changed her whole life, no matter what evil came her way, and realized what a strength that love had been.

Not caring for just that one moment if it was a liberty he should take or not he bent his head and lightly kissed Mrs. Barkley's cheek. "Thank you." 

She reached up with both hands and held his face and smiled at him. "I will be forever in your debt. I know you don't feel you can talk to me about all this pain you're carrying. But I wish you would talk to Nick or Jarrod. Don't be alone any more, Heath. Be in this family."

He nodded his head and smiled at her not sure now what she wanted, but sure if she wanted anything he could give her, it was hers. 

"Come into the house. Even Nick must be finished in the bath by now and you can wash before dinner. And I need to look at your shoulder after you wash." She was all business now and tucked her arm through his and pulled him toward the house that beckoned with lighted windows. He allowed her to lead him toward the house and the family, no longer feeling quite the same evil specter at the feast.

Dinner was a quiet affair. Audra had pleaded tired and gone to bed after her bath. Nick spent most of the meal recounting the ambush on the ride back, and Jarrod told them the news of the outlaw band now traced further north to another bank robbery and more stolen horses. Nick asked Heath about the rescue, could he tell what had happened that night, now that the girls weren't there to be bothered by the tale?

Heath shook his head and then realized he needed to tell them something so they would know what had happened to Audra and how brave she'd been.

"I caught up to them before they stopped to camp. When they did stop I shot a couple of them and got them riding once more. Managed to get lost in their dust and the night enough to get the girls loose before they stopped again. Audra was wonderful caring for the girls, helping to keep watch." He moved his uneaten dinner around on his plate as he spoke, all of his attention on the food, not looking at his family. He wasn't sure Mrs. Barkley would know, but Nick and Jarrod would know that his not letting them stop to camp and shooting a couple of them was his sneaking in the dark and shooting unsuspecting men from ambush. He glanced up at Nick to gauge his reaction and found his brother studying him silently, his face strangely expressionless for Nick. He looked away quickly toward Jarrod, equally still, also just looking at him.

"I was alone. I couldn't take a chance on them killing me and no one to get the girls," he tried to explain, but knew there was no justification for what he'd done. There'd never been any right to shooting men like deer. Stalking them and waiting for them to show themselves so they could be killed, never even knowing they were in danger. Killed like he'd killed that horse today on the trail, waiting until the horse was thinking on something else and then putting a bullet in his head.

He turned toward Mrs. Barkley, as he'd seen the others do, but not looking at her and mumbled an, 'excuse me,’ and left the room through the French doors, back out into the night. He walked over to the little bench by the tree and sat down and pulled out his makings and began to roll a quirley. He let his fingers work with the paper and the tobacco while he searched for the horses in the corral, shadowed by the light from the house. He just didn't see how this was going to work out. How a man like him could live with folks like this. These were good people who would never understand a man like him. How could they understand a man who could look at nine cowboys and decide on how they needed to be killed and just commence to doing it, with no thought for their lives or his soul.

He'd let himself get caught up in this place and these people because he'd been so lost without his mother, so sad at her parting from him. But he didn't belong here. Somewhere in Tennessee he'd stopped being the kind of man who could live with regular people, who should live with regular people. He was surrounded with so much death that it just naturally attracted more death. He was like a cat, bringing dead bodies home not having anything else he could share with the folks he loved. He admitted to himself, messing with the quirley he'd rolled until the shabby thing fell back to pieces, that he loved these people. He thought he'd never wanted anything in his life as much as he wanted to stay here and be a Barkley, but he was no Barkley. He was just someone who killed other men so well that he left Nick Barkley amazed.

He smelled Jarrod and Nick coming up behind before he saw them, the smell of Jarrod's rich cigars preceding them in the soft spring air. The two men carried cigars and whiskey glasses. Nick handed him a glass of the dark amber liquid that Jarrod called Scotch and that didn't taste like any liquor he'd ever had before, smoky and smooth so it hardly burned at all when he drank it.

They didn't say anything. Nick sat beside him on the bench and Jarrod stood on his other side, leaning back against one of the lower limbs of the apple tree. He thought about rolling another quirley but didn't want the trouble and just sat enjoying the smooth whiskey and the smoke of his brothers’ cigars.

After a long time of silence Jarrod began speaking, "I won't say we're in your debt, Heath. I don't think one brother can owe another for saving his sister, it's what brothers do. And I won’t say I'm impressed by your courage, because it's what Nick or I would have done had we been there. But I will say I'm overwhelmed by your skill. I'd sure like to think if it had been Nick or I there, that we could have gotten those girls back…." Jarrod was silent for a time smoking, looking off into the darkness when Heath glanced up at him to see was he done talking. Jarrod looked down at him caught his eye and smiled at him so Heath looked away again, not sure what this all meant or where it was going.

"You know Jarrod,” Nick told him. “Never say with five words what you can say with twenty-five. What my lawyer brother is trying to tell you is that the right Barkley went after those girls. The Barkley that could get them back without their getting hurt." Nick spoke softly, sounding like Jarrod when he didn't have that loudness to his voice.

He thought about what Nick had said. He hadn't been able to see any other way of getting those girls back. He'd done what he knew to do. He'd killed those men afraid that if he just shot, if they weren't frightened from seeing their friends killed, that they would take more time and realize the posse that had caught them in the dark was a lone rider. He'd had the skill to do what he'd done, but not the skill to think of another way of doing it. A way of doing it that didn't result in six dead men.

"I snuck up on them and killed them before they could know it was coming. Six men in less then half an hour dead, they never knowing who or why."

"Oh, they knew why. They stole those girls was why. No one comes riding into this valley and goes riding out with our sister. No one, but one of us goes after him and kills him. I'm sorry you had to do it alone, but I will forever be grateful that you were able to." Nick's voice was rising now, his remembered anger giving it volume. His tone dropped and his hand came down to Heath's shoulder, "I just don’t understand how you did it. How you could manage to shoot those men in the dark and hit them?"

"There was a moon."

"How you shot those men in the dark, and I'll grant a moon sure helped, but it was still night, boy, and you were still hurt and alone and had just ridden fifty miles. You managed to kill six men and rescue those girls. How'd you do that?" Nick's voice was quiet again as if they were talking about the weather and not murdering six men, as if this was the sort of thing brothers talked about on a warm spring night, how one of them managed to kill six men in the moonlight.

He didn't say anything. What could he say? Well, Nick, you’re a really good foreman and Jarrod's a great lawyer, and me, the little, bastard brother, well I'm just a natural born killer.

"And this afternoon when those last three ambushed us. POW! You're out of the saddle, got Audra undercover and have already killed one of them while I'm still trying to figure out where they are. And I'm good, too, little brother. Don't go thinking I'm not. I fought for two years all through Virginia and the eastern theatre. I've fought in a fair share of engagements, seen other men fight. I know what I'm seeing in a fight and you move twice as fast as any man I've ever seen. You should have seen him, Jarrod. Pow!" Nick slapped his open palm on his thigh as he spoke, directing his words to his older brother. "He just moves and he's there, he just aims and the man dies." 

Nick was getting expansive now and Heath started to get to his feet, to leave this talking. He didn't want to hear this reliving of a thing he knew he'd be reliving plenty, awake and asleep with no help needed from Nick, when Jarrod's hand on his shoulder stopped him.

"That's not the way you see it though, is it, Brother Heath?" Jarrod spoke to him softly in that quiet, curious way he had, as if there was nothing he wanted to hear more than his answer and no one else in the world except the two of them. But he knew Jarrod. He knew he could usually out-wait Jarrod and he'd answer his own question. So he sat and looked at the mountains he couldn't see in the dark, and waited for Jarrod to release his hold on his shoulder so he could escape this conversation he was not going to have.

"You don't seem to view your amazing skill back there on the trail with the same pride that Nick does?" Jarrod continued the conversation without him and he waited him out. Waited, see if Jarrod could have this whole conversation while he just sat here silent. "I'm having a little trouble understanding how you thought you were going to get Audra back if you didn't kill those men? What did you think, that you could ride after them and they'd let her go? Do you think someone takes exception to what you did, killing those men?"

"Jarrod, I imagine that process works really well in the courtroom but you're not trying to convince a jury here. You're trying to talk to the most silent man I've ever met. You want him to talk, you got to shut up and listen."

Heath glanced over at Nick surprised at this from the normally most talkative of brothers and saw a smirk on Nick's face directed at Jarrod. Nick proud for knowing something that Jarrod didn't.

"You're right, Nick. Mine is a profession that generally rewards verbiage. Please forgive me, Heath. Also forgive me because you know I think maybe the answers to those questions might very well be something you don't want to share." 

They were all quiet for a short time, his two older brothers seeming to be lost in their cigars and whiskey, while he tried to think how this was all going to end. He'd had one or both of these brothers in his room while he'd been injured upstairs in this house the past weeks. They'd spoken of horses and cattle and in Jarrod's case books and men, and he'd known that the men wanted more from him in those conversations than he'd been able to give. They'd wanted his past, the story of his life, a story he just couldn't give them, a story that he'd never given anyone. 

People knew about him what they saw. The rest was his to know, to keep close, to forget if he could. He knew these brothers were his family and meant him no harm. But the only family he knew was his mama and he didn't bring dark things home to her and he wouldn't do less for these brothers. So he talked about the good things with them, breaking horses in Corning, driving a stage in the Sierras, herding cattle in Texas, but he knew they wanted more. That unlike his mother, these men wanted the dark bits as well as the light and he couldn't trade in that darkness, didn't have words for sharing those parts. He didn't have the heart to look at those memories.

After more smoke and more quiet Jarrod began again. "Mother thinks that maybe there's more to that rescue that you aren't telling us. That maybe you think you did something wrong, killing those men?"

He'd heard Nick and Jarrod at dinner. He knew that they were just glad to have Audra home and didn't think that killing the men who'd taken her was anything other than a good thing. That they didn't understand that maybe there had been a better way to rescue those girls, a way that didn't leave six men dead. He didn't mind so much those men that'd died today on the trail. Those men who'd tried to kill him from ambush and had been willing to kill Nick and Audra. Those men had chosen that fight and that death when they followed them and shot at them. 

The deaths that wore on him were the six men who'd never seen him coming. The six men who'd never known there was someone out there hunting them until they'd died. Those six men he'd killed in the dark. Those six men he'd murdered to rescue the girls that a wiser man might have let live. The deaths of those six men was Heath Thomson doing what he'd sworn he would never do again: murder men from ambush.

Jarrod's hand was gone from his shoulder now as his older brother messed with his cigar and whiskey, and he stood to walk away from this talking, only to be stopped by Nick's hand on his forearm. "Talk to us, Heath."

He turned and looked at Nick sitting on his bench and up at Jarrod, cigar smoke a cloud around his head in the light from open doors behind them. There was nothing here for talking about. This was just another memory to be forgotten as well as he could, so he'd have a life in the daylight not shadowed by remembered dead. Not something for talking about in the warm darkness with glasses of liquor and smoky cigars. He looked down at Nick's hand on his arm and then up at Nick's face. "Let go."

"I'm afraid to let go, Heath. I'm afraid if I let you go, you'll leave." Nick's voice was very soft but his look promised loudness to come if he tried to get free of him.

The talking and the holding and the brothers felt like a trap, forcing something from him he couldn't give. Asking for a talking that he couldn't give these brothers; a remembering of things past that were best not spoken of or remembered. "Let me go."

"No. What's hurting you?" Nick's voice still soft as he rose to stand next to Heath, his hand still on Heath's forearm, a kindness in his asking that made it harder for him to move away.

"Nothing's hurting me, I'm just tired." That at least was true, maybe not all of the truth but a big part of it. He was tired of riding, tired of being tired, tired of killing people and most of all tired of trying to find his way through this mystery of Barkleys.

"We can't force you to talk to us, Heath. We can't force you and we won't try to." This last from Jarrod, he thought as much for Nick as for him. "But I wish you would. I wish you would trust us enough to tell us why you're not celebrating the outcome of this awful thing as much as the rest of us? You saved three lives, five if you count you and Nick on the trail this afternoon, and all I see is sorrow."

He shook Nick's hand free of his forearm, pulling his arm to his chest so Nick had to either let go or hold tight. He turned his back on the two other men looking toward the corral and the mountains while he tried to think, not wanting to just open his mouth and let words pour out and say more than he meant to say. "I just wish… I didn't have to kill all those men is all." 

He doubted that would be enough for them to understand the weight of those dead men on his soul but it was the best he could do. He didn’t want to start dragging up all the bodies in his past to try and explain how tired he was of killing men. How he'd promised himself he wouldn't do any more of that murdering from hiding. He didn't see any point in talking about this but knew that for Barkleys, talking about a thing was important, so he tried to give them some talking. 

"It's never easy to kill a man. Or at least it shouldn't be easy. It's the sort of thing that should weigh on a man. The taking of a life should matter no matter the circumstances."

He thought that Jarrod was talking to himself as much as to Nick and him. He thought that Jarrod was trying to have a conversation with him about the killing, maybe saying the words he wanted to hear from Heath, saying those words for him.

"But those men, they deserved to die. They kidnapped Audra and Cecilia and Susan. They'd taken those other girls near Rio Vista. Those men deserved to die for what they did." Nick said, taking the other side, speaking for the prosecution with the sure, simple view that Nick had of the world, of good and evil. The view of the world and right and wrong that let Nick make a decision without thinking or remorse for what he did.

"But they were still men, Nick. They still died out there on the trail and Heath had to kill them. No matter what they deserved, Heath had to kill them." Jarrod came up behind him that one step and around in front of him so he was facing this oldest brother, Jarrod standing between him and the corral of horses and the mountains that had always been his home. When Jarrod spoke again his words were softer and directed to Heath and not to Nick. "And that's the problem isn't it, Heath. That you had to kill those men to get the girls back?"

"No, Jarrod. The problem is that I had to murder six men who couldn't defend themselves because they didn't even see the killing coming. The problem is that here I am six more men murdered, six more men killed from ambush never saw the shot coming. You said I was the best man you ever saw in a fight Nick," turning from Jarrod now to face Nick behind him. "The best man you ever saw in a fight…" more softly to himself. "Well that was no fight. Those six men were murdered plain and simple. I hid, I drew a bead on those men trying to make camp and I murdered them. Then I rode ahead of them and shot a man out of his saddle, never knew where I was or that he was in danger." 

He turned back to Jarrod, "As Nick says, ‘Pow’ and he's dead. The other three, no problem, dark and dusty, looking for friends behind them, I ride up. ‘Pow.’ They're dead, too. That's not a fight. That's murder." 

He looked down at his hands now, shaking he was so angry, saying things he didn't mean to say and not able to stop the words. Looking, expecting to see the blood running off his hands. Then taking a step back so he faced both brothers. "I'm so good at murder, I see a man two hundred, three hundred yards away, maybe lighting his pipe or talking to a friend and ‘Pow,’ he's a dead body. Kill that man leading those troops. ‘Pow,’ dead body. Kill that General. ‘Pow,’ dead body. I'm one of the best murderers you'll ever meet, maybe the very best. They kept telling me I was. You want a man murdered? You get Heath Thomson, he'll do it for you." He couldn't stop the words, he couldn't make his mouth stop talking, words were coming out he never meant to say to anyone and they wouldn't stop. He was still talking when he turned his back on them and headed into the darkness, "’Pow,’ killed another one."

Nick had him by the arm, holding him there when all he wanted to do was get away and stop the talking, stop this awful telling. "Careful, Nick. Could be you're next. I could decide you need killing. No telling who I'll decide needs murdering next."

"I'm sorry, Heath. I'm so sorry." Nick pulled him into one of those bear hugs that seemed to promise safety and love, dropping his cigar and whiskey so his arms were free to come around him and provide that shelter from the awful talking.

But he couldn't stop now. They'd asked him to talk and he couldn't stop. His face half buried in Nick's vest the words still kept coming out muffled and distorted by his brother's embrace. "No one is better at sneaking around in the dark and murdering people. It's my specialty. You want someone killed in the dark. I'm the very best at that."

"It's done now, Heath. That killing is done. That war is over. This was different. Never forget your sister. I'm so sorry I wasn't there to help you. I came as fast as I could, but I knew I was too late to save Audra. I knew that only you could save her and you did. You saved her, Heath. Remember Audra. Remember the saving. Remember the ride home with her laughing and her going to make us a cake tomorrow and you maybe going to drive her to town. Remember that. Remember that if you hadn't killed those men, none of that would be. You didn't destroy anything, you saved Audra."

Nick talked at him and held him close and somewhere in the talking and the holding he remembered his sister, the brightest thing in his whole life. His wonderful sister of the beautiful hair and the wild courage and he nodded his head and pulled away from Nick. He stood with his head down so ashamed of his talking and his weakness brought on by the remembering, but so thankful for Nick's reminding him why he'd done that ride and that killing.

"So, no more talking." He tried to smile. "I'm not a good talker, I get going, can't stop."

"Heath," Nick put his hands on his shoulders, gently on the sore one but harder on the strong shoulder holding him still while he looked at him in the light from the house. He glanced up at Nick who was studying him hard in the light, Jarrod just behind him. "I don't know what you did in the war. I got an idea and I know you, so I know whatever it was you did it well. I know some things are hard to get beyond, to forget. I know that sometimes other things, they remind you of stuff you're trying to forget and the whole gets pulled into one remembering." Nick stopped talking but held him still by his shoulders. 

"I'm not gifted with words the way Jarrod is, but I started this talking so I'll try and finish it. I know there are things that happened before you came here that haunt you. I've seen the haunting. Those things are inside you, they'll be with you no matter where you go. You stay here with us, you let us help you make better memories to put between you and those bad memories. You let us help you deal with the haunting. When remembering gets to be a problem you tell us, Jarrod and me, and we'll drink whiskey and smoke cigars and talk. Not about the memories or the war if that's too hard, but about the good things here in this valley and in this family. We'll remind you why it's so good to be alive and so good to be here in this family. Will you do that, please, Heath?"

He looked at Nick and Jarrod there in the darkness, so straight and strong and sure about him and life. He marveled that this could be his family. That these men could ask him to be part of this, offer to help him even as they must now know or at least suspect what kind of man he was. Know what he'd done in the war from his awful talking. Yet, still they wanted him here. He took a step forward to Nick and awkwardly wrapped his arm around him and gave him back a quick embrace for that understanding and then he turned to Jarrod and did the same. He stepped away from them so he could see them both and nodded. Then, not saying anything, he walked into the darkness toward the corral to take some time, to put his mind back in order from too much talking and remembering and feeling.

"Heath."

He stopped and turned back toward his brothers.

"You want some company, Little Brother?" Jarrod asked.

Heath looked at his two brothers, standing there shadows in the light from the big ranch house, his brothers. He felt such a lightening of his spirits that tears came to his eyes, Barkleys making him cry again.

"Always," he said simply, knowing that for the a truth he had been seeking his whole life.


	9. Chapter 9

"AnnMarie how was your lunch yesterday. I saw you just as you stepped into the hotel and had I not been across the road I would have called out. I understand that Sorenson has hired a Chinese cook. I wondered if the food was, well, oriental at all?"

AnnMarie looked at Helen Merar while she tried to think back to what she'd had for lunch the previous day. It certainly hadn't seemed any different from any other lunch at the Cattleman's, but the place didn't offer much variety.

"Really, Chinese, my how exotic," from Edith before AnnMarie had had a chance to reply. "So, what was the occasion?"

AnnMarie smiled at Edith, "Audra and her brother were in town to visit with Cecilia and it was just too hot to cook."

"Nick? My it's not often he gets into town in the middle of the day. But I suppose after that awful thing at Preston's she would want her brother with her." Helen said, nearly salivating AnnMarie thought, at the prospect of a good piece of gossip about the Barkleys. She wondered how someone as quiet and self-effacing as Howard Merar had ended up married to someone as talkative and small minded as Helen?

"No, not Nick, the youngest Barkley boy, Heath, lovely young man, quiet but very nice manners and so pleasant to look at. I feel that good looks in a young man are so important, shows a good character, don't you think?" AnnMarie directed this last to Edith whose own son was handsome, so she felt sure Edith would have to agree with her about the value of a good appearance.

"Yes, I'm sure you must be right," Edith said, after a moment's hesitation and then continued more uncertainly. "You had lunch at the hotel with Audra and the new Barkley boy?"

"And Cecilia, of course, I think he's easily one of the most charming boys I've met. I imagine we'll be seeing quite a bit of him in the future." AnnMarie smiled at the company and took a small sip of her tea.


End file.
